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2014 UK Customer Service Survey

Victoria Elizabeth

Content Executive, Expert Market UK

June 2014

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About Expert Market

Expert Market is the premier B2B marketplace in the UK, Europe and US, bring-

ing together businesses and office product suppliers in one place. We provide

comprehensive information to help you make the right purchase decisions, and

provide a free quote service when you are ready to find the best supplier near

you.

Expert Market’s goal is to become the world’s marketplace for starting busi-

nesses and a one-stop shop for business managers who want to save time

researching and comparing products and services.

Whether you are managing a team of three, or an enterprise of 300, managers

need to make sure that the tools and systems that make a business viable are in

place, working efficiently and helping sustain growth.

Expert Market helps businesses develop and grow by giving you all the tools

and information you need to make the right choices, without any of the hassle.

Find out more at expertmarket.co.uk

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Contents

About Expert Market 2

Key Findings 4

Introduction 5

Challenges for Small Businesses in the UK 6

Customer Service Woes 7

Winning Customer Back 9

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Key Findings

Here are a few key findings from the survey that summarise how Brits feel

about customer service today.

Almost three quarters (72.4%) of UK customers would ditch their purchase for

a competitor after not getting an email reply within 1 day.

British businesses lose 85.5% of callers if they don’t answer them within 5 min

or less.

67.4% of Brits prefer updates on their place in the queue or time left to wait,

rather than 80’s elevator music.

94.2% of people hesitate or refuse to make a customer service call if the number

had dialling charges.

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Introduction

Expert Market’s Customer Service survey is a nationwide review of British con-

sumer sentiments on how well businesses in the UK are handling comments,

complaints, requests for information and other communications.

We have petitioned 1009 respondents to give their honest opinions of personal

preferences when communicating complaints, thresholds for waiting for a reply,

and general pain points relating to business communications.

We wanted to get a broad view of the landscape of customer service today,

where consumer expectations lie, and how far the gap is between what British

businesses offer, and what customers receive.

What we found was astonishing, and in other ways clichéd of British consum-

ers. The conclusions point to the fact that all businesses, but small businesses

in particular, need to start focusing much more effort into their communications

with customers, or risk losing out on major revenue potential.

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Challenges for Small Businesses in the UK

Today’s small businesses face a slew of challenges that require a careful and

determined leader to navigate through. Each business has unique challenges

to overcome, however one that seems to get overlooked is customer service

optimisation.

Many business owners lack the incentive to dedicate funds to customer service.

It’s not always obvious where their money will go or how efficiently it will be

used, making the decision to invest much more difficult for smaller businesses.

Another factor that creates a major challenge for smaller businesses is the time

and human resource they need in order to provide customer service to custom-

ers. Whether hiring a full-time customer service agent, or assigning tasks to cur-

rent staff members in similar roles, this will inevitably take time away from other

projects.

The last thing that business owners need to keep in mind is the training involved

with getting a customer service agent up to date with current promotions, com-

pany policies, brand messaging and how to correctly resolve conflicts, which

can take some time to get right.

However, with 93.4% of respondents claiming that good customer service makes

them loyal to a brand, the incentive is actually under your very nose.

Most small businesses believe that they aren’t big enough to require a full-time

customer service agent, however this is far from true. Whether you have a small

bricks and mortar shop, or a large multichannel operation, your customers will

inevitably hit a stumbling block in their purchase path and require assistance.

No business is completely immune from this, and the sooner you realise this, the

more opportunities you have to fix issues that will arise.

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Customer Service Woes

Customers responded with overwhelming agreement about certain aspects of

customer service. While 38.8% of people still prefer to interact with someone

in person, the traditional phone call (50%) or email (44.5%) are still the most

popular forms of communication.

The biggest pain points for customers were waiting time and dialling charges

for calls. More than a quarter (28%) of respondents said they would wait less

than 6hrs for an email before turning to a competitor. A further 66.2% would

wait 3 days, meaning that most companies who wait longer than this will lose

most of their custom to this very avoidable mistake.

Another major pain point includes paying to communicate with businesses. It

is common for UK businesses to offer a free number to call from home phones,

however very few people have this ability due to the near universal use of cell

phones in the UK. Dialling charges for cell phones are a major friction point,

since they can easily add up on a customer’s bill. Additionally they will have

no idea how long they will be on hold, making the process more nerve-racking

when they see their call time growing steadily.

This may also account for why businesses will lose out on 85.5% of callers if they

make them wait longer than 5 minutes on hold.

From a customer’s point of view, this makes sense since investing time, money

or both to get something that you already expect is a bad start for any business

interaction.

Dialing Charges

Do dialing charges stop you from making calls?

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

YES NOSOMETIMES

518

423

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When people did make calls to customer service numbers, they responded in

typically British fashion, with queuing information being the most important

while on hold. Time to wait on hold accounted for 39.1% of responses, while the

place in the queue 28.3%.

Another clichéd response was that although Brits are 90% likely to recommend

a business to a friend after receiving good customer service, they are also much

less keen on paying more for a product if the service is better.

Phone Call Queueing Preferences

What do you prefer to listen to when waiting on hold?

39.1% Updates on time to wait

9.4%

Nothing but ringing

28.3% Updates on place in queue

5.7% Latest co. news and policies

12.1% 80’s elevator music

5.5% Other contact options

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Winning Customer Back

These negative results shouldn’t deter you however, since there are many afford-

able solutions to all of these issues, even for a small business.

Here at Expert Market we believe that every business, no matter how small,

has the ability to handle their customer communications with greater skill and

efficiency. Customer retention is the key to scaling up quickly, since it is much

cheaper to keep an existing customer happy, than to keep trying to get new

ones.

Here are some quick customisable solutions:

CRM

Having a proper CRM system in place can help alleviate many of the issues dis-

cussed above. Implementing the right software will allow you to see where you

customers are coming from, how they interact with your business, and how you

should communicate with them.

Many CRM systems offer an email marketing solution, which is a great way to

keep track of inquiries, and depending on your type of business, can account

for a majority of your communication needs.

Read more about CRM systems for small businesses here.

Telephone Systems

Another option to consider is having a business telephone system installed,

which can be cheaper than you even imagined, with VOIP and cloud-based

solutions available across the UK and Europe.

Read more about Telephone Systems for small businesses here.