CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT – THE ROAD TO 2020Are digital technologies delivering on the promise of excellent customer engagement: the consumer’s view.

UK research-based consumer survey 2018

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INTRODUCTION

“The customer of 2020 will be more informed and in charge of the experience they receive. They will expect companies to know their individual needs and personalize the experience. Immediate resolution will not be fast enough as customers will expect companies to proactively address their current and future needs.”

— Customers 2020, Walker

The Institute of Customer Service, UK Customer Satisfaction Index 2017, discovered that the number of customers escalating their complaints increased noticeably last year, from 41% to 49%. This puts continued pressure on customer service teams to deliver a higher volume of interactions with greater consumer expectations.

But what do consumers really need in terms of service, what are their preferences and bugbears? Finding out their inclinations will inform what businesses need to implement in order to meet, and ideally exceed, customer expectations.

In 2017 we asked contact centre managers their customer service priorities and challenges, as well as their plans for technology investment to see how they were meeting customer demands at the time and how they planned to in the future. The findings can be found in our State of Customer Experience Report 2017, which discovered a large technology gap, with 88% of organisations expecting digital customer interactions to overtake voice by 2020. Yet, only 29% of contact centre leaders felt confident they could design and deliver seamless customer experiences across multiple channels, including voice and digital. A year on, we wanted to survey consumers to see from their perspective whether brands are delivering convenient contact centre options.

But just 37% of consumers in this year’s survey agreed that businesses are getting better at offering efficient customer contact options. Delving more into continuing challenges, 74% find it frustrating when customer service is only available during working hours, with many wanting to be able to contact companies through means such as mobile apps and online self-service portals. This is particularly pertinent as 81% agree or completely agree that a poor experience in customer service channels makes them less likely to continue to use products or services from that brand/company.

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Customer engagement – the road to 2020, presents our findings and recommendations to close these technology and engagement gaps, listening to how consumers prefer to be contacted and how cloud-based, scalable communications can solve these issues.

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OUR METHODOLOGYUsing an independent research company, we undertook an online survey of 2,039 consumers to explore their experiences and desires for excellent customer engagement. We wanted to discover their preferred channels, customer service annoyances, and how important human contact is to them.

This report defines excellent customer engagement as the offering of multiple communications channels (email, web chat, social media etc.), and integration with systems such as CRM, which enable contact centres to have a single customer view and respond to them first time right on their preferred channel and in a timely manner.

CONTENTS• Keeping pace

• Convenience is king

• Managing impatience

• Transitioning to mobile contact

• Humans vs. bots

• Channel preferences

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KEEPING PACE

Despite years of complaints about contact centres, there are still numerous consumer bugbears being experienced that contact centre managers must resolve to deliver a superior service that retains customers. Many consumers still don’t feel they are being given enough channels to contact brands on, and when they have to resort to calling (meaning they’ve already had a negative experience) they experience additional frustrations.

If consumers can resolve issues quickly through self-service, they will. They expect transactions to be as easy as ordering an Uber. But when they have to call the contact centre they often encounter agents with a disconnected view of previous interactions and channels, making it a struggle to deal with their complaints quickly. These challenges can be overcome by offering multiple communications types, including email, web chat, and social media, and integration with systems such as CRM.

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CONVENIENCE IS KING

Modern lifestyles require modern contact centres that offer modern conveniences. With customer experience predicted to overtake product and price as the key differentiators for companies by 2020, today’s customers expect to interact with brands at a time and in a way that suits them. Companies should be striving to communicate on an individual basis with customers; from personalisation, to having services that record historical transactions, to better understanding a customer’s unique needs.

People are used to transacting with business on-the-go with their mobile devices, using their commutes, work breaks, watching TV, or while waiting for their dinner to cook to sort out issues through methods that are quick and handy, like SMS, web chat and other one-click services. When it comes to contacting customer service, 70% of consumers say that they want more channels to get in touch with companies. Busy consumers demand options and flexibility to reach contact centres at the times that are most convenient for them. Not offering convenience will impact brand loyalty and directly effect your bottom line.

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MANAGING IMPATIENCE

Not only do consumers want to contact brands through multiple channels and at a convenient time to them, they also have perceptions of how long they should wait for a reply. Consumer expectations around brand responsiveness are high, the majority of our respondents want most enquiries to be dealt with within a maximum of three hours, giving the least leniency to calls, live chat and web forms. This closely aligns to research by Zendesk that found that a baseline for first reply time is half a day for requests submitted via email or web form, two hours for those from social media, and a few seconds for chat and messaging. This aligns with over two fifths of UK consumers admitting to being more impatient than five years ago in a The Instant Gratification Nation, report by Fetch and YouGov, so response time expectations will likely get increasingly shorter.

As more and more customers expect companies to respond to them in real-time, this requires a 360-degree view of each customer, so that new interactions can be handled with accurate responses and fast. With integrated AI-powered technology many enquiries don’t have to be handed by a human workforce, which increases the ability to meet these expectations and enable agents to focus on complex queries on the phone where customers are most impatient. This helps to deliver on the promise of excellent customer engagement.

The versatile and customer-centric nature of a cloud-based contact centre means that customers can spend less time waiting in lines, and more time having their issues actively managed and resolved. Agents can customise customer engagement with access to any previous queries, be able to transfer them across the business, and deliver a customer-centric experience.

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TRANSITIONING TO MOBILE CONTACT

Mobile apps are now an integral part of daily life for many of us and an obvious way to provide effortless customer experiences for a wide range of simple transactions, from checking a bank balance, to ordering the weekly groceries, or for businesses to give VIP customers access to premium services.

Nearly half of the consumers surveyed said that being able to contact a company through a mobile app or on their mobile to deal with issues on the move would appeal to them most. While women preferred this method of contact over men almost twofold, the youngest respondents expect mobile contact the most due to their preference for instant gratification and self-service methods. And with the ‘always-on’ generation now making up the largest consumer demographic and therefore significant buying power – you can’t afford to ignore them.

This aligns with our State of Customer Experience Report, where contact centre professionals felt that their customers embraced messaging apps due to their immediacy as a real-time channel for expertise rather than voice. It’s time for brands to wake up to this preferred method of contact.

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HUMANS VS. BOTS

At their Customer Experience Summit 2018 Gartner predicted that 25% of customer service operations will use virtual customer assistants by 2020, with organisations reporting a reduction of up to 70% in call, chat and/or email enquiries. Our survey supports this, finding that 79% of consumers no longer expect to pick up the phone and talk to a person as the best way to get an instant answer.

However, with the introduction of all these communication channels, a fully-integrated approach to managing customer interactions is necessary, which is not yet being delivered. When asked ‘What drives you to pick up the phone and call customer service as opposed to using other channels?’ 44% said it was because they prefer calling to speak to a real human, which increases with age as over half (56%) of 55+ year olds are more likely to resort to the phone.

And 57% of consumers still believe human agents are more valuable because you can explain a complex situation and speak to someone who takes concerns seriously (45%). Therefore, to meet the expectations of every demographic, a natively integrated best of breed contact centre approach is required, with the choice of human contact or self-service and the seamless ability to interchange between them as required.

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CHANNEL PREFERENCES

According to our research, offering self-service and email are clearly the best options for your customers to quickly resolve minor issues, while also empowering agents to focus on dedicated and complex queries via more immediate means. But of course, some people will still prefer to speak to a representative and voice is still the preferred channel for getting help and support, and second for both making a complaint and booking.

This will be a continued transition, Forrester’s report, Engagement Costs Continue To Rise Even with Digital: Here's How To Fight It, found that self- service interactions have overtaken all other channels for the third year running – showing its importance.

Making a booking

Researching a product or service

Getting help or support

Making a complaint

Voice Email Live Chat

Online Self

Service

Web Form

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CONCLUSIONWith digital interactions set to overtake voice within just a few short years, organisations must continue to make fundamental changes to people, processes and technology. In our State of Customer Experience study 88% of contact centre managers expected digital interaction to overtake voice calls by 2020. However, contact centre managers were behind, with 49% offering email as a customer communication channel, 39% using webchat and just 21% web self-service.

This shows a large gap in being able to deliver excellent customer engagement despite customer demand already being there. Voice is subsiding as a customer preference, self-service is on an increasing trajectory, and 70% want more convenient options to get in touch with companies at a time that suits.

Your customer service operation needs the ability to re-configure and adapt the contact centre quickly and at scale to overcome disconnected omnichannel challenges and meet consumer needs for informed, convenient, and fast interactions.

New cloud-based technology such as West’s Cloud Contact Pro allows you to deliver this with a flexible, natively integrated, CAPEX solution.

West Cloud Contact Pro maps out the best possible customer journey using real-time data (all on one screen) - and reacts within minutes to changed situations. This means that agents and customers can pick and mix a variety of communications types, including email, web chat, and social media. As well as 'channel pivot' (instantly switching customers from one contact channel to another when appropriate), to better manage the customer experience. While at the same time offering and integrating self-serve capabilities, as most common complaints can be avoided if your contact centre is designed to resolve queries first time with a consumer’s preferred method.

To find out more about how to deliver communication solutions that create connected customer experiences click here.

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