Why social customer service will come of age in 2012
Social media and customer service would seem to be a match made in heaven. In 2012, more and more brands will commit beyond simply responding to customers on Twitter.
Brands are actively recruiting customers into online communities to help them develop products, give feedback and report issues.
First Direct’s ‘Live’ community discusses openly anything from savings rates to charitable donations, and includes a (very brave) sentiment tracker on the front page to show, live, what people think about the brand (it’s overwhelmingly positive at the time of writing).
Three quarters of travel research takes place online: survey
The internet places a massive role in the research process for travel products, with 71% of consumers having browsed for a flight, hotel or holiday in the last six months.
With the help of Toluna Quick, we surveyed 5,000 UK consumers in September as part of our research for the Econsultancy / Foviance Multichannel Customer Experience Report.
Here are some of the findings from the travel section of the report...
Gaming brands need to work on customer experience: survey
Consumers are less likely to recommend a gambling brand based on good customer experience than companies in the retail, mobile, banking and travel sectors.
Just 47% of consumers would endorse a gambling brand, compared with a high of 73% for retailers, and 64% for mobile phone brands, the second lowest score.
With the help of Toluna Quick, we surveyed 5,000 UK consumers in September as part of our research for the Econsultancy / Foviance Multichannel Customer Experience Report.
Here are some of the findings from the gaming section of the accompanying consumer survey report...
Etailers need to pay more attention to email customer service
I read with interest that Ryanair was the subject of a recent EU decision, thanks to its failure to provide an email address as a customer contact option.
While it's important that companies selling online should provide customer service by email, retailers should make sure that customers can easily find an email address, and that responses are within a reasonable time.
Unfortunately, this doesn't always happen, and many online retailers have plenty of room for improvement in their email customer service.
Where does customer service fit into your digital strategy?
Last week I attended a roundtable about customer service hosted by Foviance to mark the UK’s National Complaints Day.
A recurring theme was how customer service is often overlooked by those in the digital sector, despite being an area which permeates so many parts of an organisation.
Consequently, I began thinking about how companies need to identify and implement different areas of customer service.
Unhappy customers turn to social media: survey
Customers who experience problems when conducting transactions online are sharing these experiences on social media sites; 13% this year compared with 8% in 2008.
This is one of the findings of a Tealeaf survey of online customer behaviour, and provides another reminder that online retailers need to focus on customer experience, especially as 74% of online adults said negative comments read online have an influence on whether they will do business with a company.
Next website can't handle sales traffic
Next held a sale over the weekend, but it seems that its website wasn't properly prepared for the extra traffic, and many customers were asked to queue to enter the website.
I tried to access the Next sale a number of times on Saturday morning, and was asked to wait for up to six minutes on various occasions, while for others it was up to 20 minutes. Not good...
Pureplay and high street fashion retailers - who values usability more?
With the continued growth of online shopping, and with new pureplay
retailers entering the market looking for new opportunities, I would
expect that the biggest players would be leading the way in terms of
customer experience.
With the upcoming Online Fashion 100 event in London that I'll be attending, I have taken a look at some of the biggest players in the fashion industry, both pureplay retailers and high street retailers.
I was particularly interested to look at key areas of their online customer experience to find out:
1) how well some of these brands are are delivering intelligent and meaningful cross-sell and up-sells to drive higher average order values, and...
2) which retailers are potentially losing sales due to a lack of focus on the full customer experience, right through to the end of the checkout process.
10 reasons why customer service doesn’t have to suck
Last night the BBC aired Watchdog, which this week focused on the ailing state of customer service among big businesses (and no doubt some smaller ones).
Almost three quarters of people said customer service is getting worse, according to a survey of more than 7,000 consumers. The worst offenders tend to be broadband / mobile operators, and utilities companies, though web companies aren’t immune either.
It doesn’t come as any shock to me, but surely good levels of service and a focus on the customer experience are key to surviving a difficult market?
UK public sector websites have room for improvement
Paying council tax can hardly ever be a pleasant experience. Are UK council websites doing their part to make this process as smooth as possible?
In order to find out, Realeyes ran a test with 54 tax-payers, asking them to pay their council tax online on 6 different council sites. All participants were eye-tracked to gain objective measures about the user experience during the tax payment process. The study identified both good and poor design elements, wide ranging performance differences between councils and 'banner blindness' on some navigational items.
