Several thousand consumers across 10 major industry segments were surveyed recently to find out what they really think about service and the attributes they like best or least. Concurrently, executives in each industry were also interviewed. The most startling result: Consumers say that enterprises "don't know and don't care" about their needs.
Here are the top things customers want you to know:
1. Companies don't know what customers want. Forty-seven percent of consumers say companies do not understand what they experience, yet, 83 percent of executives think their companies do understand. This astounding disconnect reflects one of the most critical issues in service today.
2. Companies don't care, either. Forty-one percent of consumers say when given feedback, companies do nothing. When customers express their preferences, they are providing an "outside-in" perspective – in essence, giving a recipe for creating an effective customer experience. Being a leader requires both internal efficiency and customer effectiveness.
3. Attrition is the new customer feedback. After a bad experience, 43 percent of customers simply leave without providing any feedback to the company. Failure to understand and then preempt this attrition is mission-critical.
4. Unhappy customers are like a viral anti-marketing campaign. Dissatisfied customers may leave companies silently, but they're loud and clear with their peers. Eighty-seven percent tell friends and colleagues about their bad experience – again, without feedback to the original perpetrator.
5. The satisfied are not necessarily the loyal. Eighty-one percent of customers' expectations are generally satisfied. Thirty-six percent of the time overall service is rated exceptional. However, the majority would leave for better value. Customers are satisfied when a company successfully completes transactions and understands their needs – but merely meeting these basic requirements does not engender loyalty. Customers are loyal only when they perceive additional value beyond the ordinary parameters of service. The more extraordinary the value, the greater their loyalty. The difficult part is defining the value levers.
6. Service transcends the offer. Seventy-eight percent of consumers believe service trumps personalized features. Eighty-six percent of customers believe service defines the brand. Increasingly, customers rate a brand by their experience with the company, and service is the primary measure of that experience.
7. Smart enough never is. Ninety-three percent of consumers believe agent knowledge influences satisfaction most. Eighty-one percent of customers believe they possess more knowledge than the agent. Knowledgeable, high-performing agents consistently excel across four measures: aptitude, competence, resourcefulness and attitude. Unfortunately, high rates of attrition – a 92.9 percent increase over the past decade – means there are fewer agents who are qualified to do more than the basics. In a market where extra value defines the brand and drives loyalty, "good enough" is equivalent to failing. Companies need to counteract this trend by emphasizing training and compensation packages that create and keep superior agents.
8. Trust is the glue to loyalty. Eighty-six percent of customers have become more skeptical in the last five years. As an example, when the economic crisis hit full swing in September 2008, 95 percent of U.S. customers said they distrusted the financial services industry. Financial service have now committed substantial resources to ensure concerned customers contacting them have a superior experience that boosts trust.
9. Channels: One size fits none. Those preferring automated channels have doubled in the last four years. Fifty-five percent of the average population believes automated resolution is better than waiting to speak with someone on the phone. While agent-assisted care will remain the dominant channel, customers' preference for automation is growing at double-digit rates. Companies must balance automated self-service and agent-assisted service.
10. Nex-gen customers like self-service best. Millennials are 43 percent more likely to engage preferred automated channels. Nowhere is the preference for self-service more notable than among younger customers, defined as "millennials," a group that has grown up in the Internet era. For millennials, online interaction is ingrained. They want to handle service the same way. Because millennials are the next generation of customers, and can only grow in number, actively embracing the value shift to social-network-based service and multi-channel automation is mission critical – today.
By Ryan Pellet, vice president, Global Consulting Services, Convergys Corporation. Convergys commissioned the study discussed in the article.
January 29, 1:00 Eastern: Managed Service: Speech Self-Service Without Risk. Presented by Opus Research and Voxify. Dan Miller, senior analyst with Opus Research, will provide new research on the growth of managed service and the new ways that contact centers can improve the quality of care while reducing costs and risk. This webcast will: Define managed service and the new administration models; Describe constant improvement and the importance of tuning; Define analytics for speech applications.
February 10, 1:00 Eastern: Turning Lemons into Lemonade: How to make the most of your contact center investment during an economic crisis. Presented by Intervoice/Convergys and ClickFox. You are sitting on an untapped goldmine of customer data. How can you put it to work for you? Find out how Multichannel Analytics enables you to leverage the significant amount you've already invested in data collection, using data from any and all systems.
February 13, 1:00 Eastern: Roundtable Debate: Analytics 2009: Improving Profitability, Process and Agent Effectiveness. Analytical applications have the ability to provide critical insights into customer needs, behavior, and contact center and enterprise delivery. They provide a bridge between the contact center and enterprise departments, such as sales, marketing, product development and the executive suite. This debate will reveal the key ways in which various types of analytical applications are contributing to increased customer centricity, a better customer experience, improved loyalty and retention.
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