Do Your Contact Options Turn Customers Off?

Interactive Intelligence has found that almost half of consumers abandon an online purchase if their preferred communication channel is not offered.

Getting your customer service right is fundamental to getting repeat purchases, both in-store and online. John Lewis, Metro Bank and First Direct have built their whole brands on outstanding customer service.

The type and quality of communication between retailers and their consumers is key to ensuring they complete their purchases. Nine in ten UK consumers have a preferred method of communicating with a vendor, and almost half will abandon their online basket if that channel is not offered for queries or resolution of problems.

For consumers, it’s the virtual equivalent to being ignored by a sales assistant. As a result of poor customer service online, there has been a resurgence in the high street, with many stores refocusing on providing excellent face-to-face customer service to ensure they return.

Businesses should acknowledge that good service experience is just as important to consumers as getting the right product at the right price. The solution here is, in part, the adoption of more sophisticated technology – but it’s mostly about adopting a customer-centric mentality and setting your protocols to address common customer needs and concerns. For example, Amazon’s philosophy is to “start with the customer and work backwards”, and this permeates everything they do.

Consumers nowadays are increasingly conscious of online business processes, and intolerant of what they see as poor treatment. The seasoned online consumer is used to retailers having insight into their buying or service history and often welcomes appropriate product suggestions. However, the common narrative suggests that consumers do not like algorithms keeping tabs on their activities, so the retailer needs to be careful to up-sell at the right time.

To avoid putting off consumers, it can be helpful for the contact centre system to be integrated with CRM and other back-end systems that house customer data. This puts a customer’s personal information at the fingertips of anyone within the business, personalising interactions and quickly addressing any issues.

A key finding in the study is that speed is of the essence in effective online customer engagement. Nearly three-quarters of UK consumers would simply abandon their basket if a customer service representative was too slow to respond to them. Post-millennial consumers increasingly expect businesses to predict and pre-empt difficulties, intervening in real time to deal with problems and make them feel valued. They will not tolerate time spent figuring out how to bring a problem to a vendor’s attention, especially with simple processes such as returns.

What the modern consumer wants is the anytime/anywhere convenience of swift, problem-free self-service, whether that’s returning an item to a shop or chasing up a late delivery via email.

It is important to keep the consumer at the centre of your customer service culture. The best way to achieve this is to engage with your customers; talk to them, survey them, ask them for feedback and suggestions. And, before taking your system live, test it with a beta group to ensure it will actually achieve a great overall customer experience across every channel.

“Our research shows just how important it is to ensure you understand a consumer’s needs and offer the communications channel that’s right for them. After all, best-in-class customer engagement has the potential to retain existing customers and boost your sales figures,” said Dave Paulding, Regional Director at Interactive Intelligence.

For more information about Interactive Intelligence, visit their website.