Disjointed Communications Negatively Impacts Customer Satistisfaction

RingCentral has released a report entitled: “Overcoming the Digital Disconnect: How Disjointed Communications Technologies Are Letting Customers Down – and How to Solve It”

The report reveals that customer service expectations are not being met and disjointed communications technologies impact customer satisfaction.

Based on a global survey of 2,000 customer-facing employees by CITE Research, including 500 in the UK, the report shows that disjointed communication technologies not only harm employee productivity and morale, but also negatively impact customer satisfaction.

Customers have increasingly high expectations of good customer experience and want to communicate with businesses through a variety of channels. But these expectations are not being met due to disjointed communications technologies.

• UK customers on average stopped using a product or service 3.6 times in the last year due to bad customer service experience.
• Generation Z and millennials cut ties at a greater rate — more than five times in the last year. Men leave brands at a much higher rate than women (approximately five times versus three times).
• 89% of UK customers hate having to repeat themselves when interacting through multiple channels.
• 46% of UK customers said they have cut ties with a brand after having to repeat themselves over and over again as they are passed from agent to agent.
• 72% would rather do household chores than communicate with an ineffective chatbot.

In addition, complex workflows and ineffective communications technologies frustrate customer-facing employees and affect their ability to serve customers, and ultimately, the net earnings of the company.

In fact, not only do 77% of employees put customers through longer-than-needed service times thanks to ineffective technology, but half of respondents admitted that their frustration with communications technologies causes them to be rude to their family and friends.

“We all know that customers today want to communicate with brands across any channel, anytime, anywhere. But these expectations are simply not being met. As the data shows, customers will stop using a brand because of a bad experience,” said Sahil Rekhi, managing director, RingCentral EMEA.

“If businesses want to deliver the best possible experience, they need to arm their employees with the right communications solutions to do so — not only will this deliver the experience that customers crave, but it will ultimately result in boosting employee productivity and business profitability.”

Delivering the experience customers demand requires addressing the friction that results from fragmented employee and customer communications across channels. The research reveals that employee and customer engagement are closely linked.

91% of the global employees surveyed believe a platform that lets them seamlessly navigate between all the ways they communicate and collaborate would make customers happier.

In turn, would make employees happier. Additionally, 81% of UK employees say they would stay longer with a company if it used such a communications platform.

Additional findings reveal that:

• The UK is more likely to use phone (79%) to provide customer service support.
• 94% of UK employees think video conferencing is effective, but it is only being used today by 31% as a customer service tool.
• Similarly, 93% of UK employees think team messaging is effective, yet it is only being used by 21% as a customer service tool.
• Customer-facing employees are interested in using AI to surface the right customer data (86%) and quickly serve the right resources for customers (86%).
• AI is commonly used in customer communications to train and increase the performance of support teams (31%).

Follow the link for a a copy of the report: Overcoming the Digital Disconnect: How Disjointed Communications Technologies Are Letting Customers Down – and How to Solve It