Helpshift has released new data revealing consumers’ opinions about the state of customer service and it is bad news for the British.
More than 59 percent of British consumers surveyed stated customer service is either not improving or getting worse, in contrast to only 46 percent of French, 45 percent of Americans, 38 percent of Germans and 34 percent of Dutch.
The survey found that British consumers are more understanding during the holidays: During the busy holiday season, only 24 percent of British consumers surveyed reported that customer service declines, lower than the average of all countries surveyed of 30 percent.
Customer support queries increase significantly during the holidays: New proprietary data from Helpshift’s retail customers showed that customer support tickets globally increased 47 percent during the 2018 holiday season. Cyber Monday saw an even higher 167 percent increase in ticket volume compared to non-holiday periods.
Customer satisfaction is unaffected by the higher volume of queries during this period: Customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores during the holidays generally increased by 0.43 percent.
During Cyber Monday, CSAT actually increased even more, by six per ent. The consumer survey also found 30 percent of respondents believe customer service actually improves during the holidays, while 29 percent believe it declines.
New tools are helping retailers scale during busy periods: Helpshift retail customers saw the average time to first response to a customer support query improved by 13 percent during the 2018 holiday period compared to the rest of the year, while time to resolve a query improved by 9 percent. Time to first response improved by an additional 10 percent during Cyber Monday.
British consumers are the least likely to increase customer support interactions during the holidays: Only 19 percent of British consumers surveyed stated they interact with customer support more than usual during the holidays; 22 percent of French, 28 percent of Dutch, 31 percent of Americans and 34 percent of Germans report increased interactions.
A Helpshift spokesman said: “Retailers are learning how to scale their support operations during the busy holiday shopping season. Offering more robust self-service options, in addition to using automated technologies and modern channels like messaging, enables them to scale and maintain steady customer satisfaction scores without increasing costs. As our data reflects, digital customer service is moving the needle and helping brands scale, especially during busy times like the holidays. Yet brands need to make the move to digital-first and start automating in order to deliver on consumers’ expectations of on-demand support.”
Telecoms and airlines are viewed as providing poor support: 39 per cent of survey respondents (including 40 percent of British consumers) report that the telecommunications industry is the worst for customer service, followed by airlines at 20 percent. British respondents were a bit of an outlier, with financial services coming in with the second worst service at 18 percent, followed by airlines at 16 percent of respondents.
