Consumers are using more channels for feedback, averaging six different ones for contacting service providers.
Results of the NICE 2012 Consumer Channel Preference Survey show that 86% of respondents say they are communicating more often, or at the same level, with businesses over all channels.
The study also found that the web continues to be the most popular and growing self-service channel. At the same time, smartphone applications and social networks have grown in popularity with more than 40% of respondents saying they have increased their use of these channels.
The survey polled around 2,000 people living in major metropolitan areas in the US, the UK and Australia. Questions regarding channel preference when contacting organizations were categorized according to the following industries: telecom, financial services, travel/hospitality, insurance and healthcare.
Almost half of the respondents noted that if they are unable to accomplish a task on a company website, they will then turn to the contact center to resolve their issue. This is often due to the fact that respondents find complex tasks difficult to complete via the web self-service channel. As self-service channels are more often used for easier tasks, the contact center continues to evolve to “tier 2” status for taking care of escalated service requests.
Customer expectations are high, as 40% of respondents want the live representative to already know about their experience before beginning their conversation, to bring the issue to a quick and successful conclusion.
This trend reinforces the importance for the contact center organization to be able to understand and shape a customer interaction in real time. This is achieved by providing customer-facing employees with the context of the interaction, such as the customer’s cross-channel journey, including their most recent activities, analyzing the voice of the customer (VoC) in real time, then using the insights from the VoC and workforce performance to drive the next-best-action and execute it in the most efficient manner.