Research has revealed that 39% of companies simply file away written enquiries and complaints.
A further 57% wait for customers to follow up paper correspondence by phone before taking any action, according to new research from Iron Mountain.
The findings also revealed:
- 41% of companies report that they often have to deal with angry customers whose correspondence they have lost.
- Even in today’s digital age, more than half of companies (56%) still receive the majority of their customer enquiries on paper.
- 66% can’t store incoming enquiries from multiple channels including online, phone, social media and paper, in a single customer profile.
- Nearly a third of businesses (31%) are actively discouraging people from sending them letters.
“People still like to communicate on paper. So businesses that fail to integrate paper into their customer relationship management systems are going to lose out,” said Charlotte Marshall, Managing Director of Iron Mountain in the UK. “Customers expect the company they’re doing business with to have instant access to a single, comprehensive view of their history with the firm.”
It is recommended that companies embrace a paper-light approach, where inbound customer documents are automatically scanned and the relevant data extracted, validated and entered into the customer service process. Older or less essential documents can then be indexed and archived for easy retrieval if required.
Author: Megan Jones
Published On: 21st May 2014 - Last modified: 22nd Mar 2017
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