“Too much effort” driving away customers

It has been found that 8 in 10 people have stopped interacting with an organisation because it was too hard.

A survey conducted by Customer Contact Association, in partnership with Capita, has revealed that 8 in 10 of us have stopped interaction with an organisation because it was too hard.

Yet only 2 in 10 organisations rate customer effort (i.e. the level of frustration, amount of time invested and the number of times an organisation is contacted) as a top three measure of customer experience.

Customer satisfaction features in the top three most important measurements of customer experience (over 8 in 10 organisations), and over half of the respondents say that it is their organisation’s number one measurement of customer experience.

First contact resolution and average handling time are the second and third most important. However, with 8 in 10 organisations stating they will measure customer effort in the future, that trend looks highly likely to shift.

“It’s encouraging to see that the industry is constantly seeking ways to measure and improve the customer experience, but it’s a little surprising to see such measures as average call handling time still relied upon by some,” said Simon Hunt, Head of Quality, Insight and Improvement at Capita Customer Management.

“Arguably, the customer service market does not yet have a fit for purpose approach to measuring customer effort,” said Anne Marie Forsyth, Chief Executive at CCA. “Our survey indicates that more organisations intend to use the measure alongside other metrics, but there isn’t a standard approach as to how the data is obtained or the rating system that would enable industry-wide benchmarking.”