Customers want to speak to a human

Customers want to speak to a human on customer service issues according to new research 

• 33% of people prefer to contact customer service teams on the phone
• 36% of consumers are swayed into online purchases when live chat is available
• Language barriers, lack of empathy and overfamiliarity are all sources of frustration
• 34% of callers who hang up won’t ever call back
• Find out more here

UK consumer confidence in modern contact service centres is incredibly low with a whopping 90% describing them as ‘ineffective at dealing with issues in a new survey. It’s also one of the main causes of consumer irritation with brands, as more than 50% have seen red over their customer service treatment.

Customer service can be seen as a necessary evil by many businesses but it’s something to get right as over a third of consumers say they’ll give up on a brand if their customer service is poor. Whether your business is B2B or B2C, maintaining a good relationship with your consumers should be a top priority.

The survey, conducted by delivery management company Whistl, reveals that consumers are happy to wait on a call for an average of two and a half minutes. Despite this, consumers are often left waiting for more than 10 minutes, causing many to give up with 34% admitting that if they hang up they won’t ever call back.

Consumers are more likely to stay on hold if they’re told their place in a queue or the average hold time. But make sure you avoid repetitive hold music as 74% of people said this was highly annoying.

Make sure you have a customer demographic profile of your audience because 62% of over 65s would choose the phone over any other form of contact while surprisingly, 18-24-year-olds favoured email (47%) over social media (30%). Traditional mail has fallen out of favour in dealing with customer services issues with only 10% saying they’d prefer to communicate via letter.

Dealing with international customer service teams was also a major area of consumer complaint with language frustrations (16%), rigid script reading (13%) and lack of geographical knowledge (10%) among the top issues.

If you’re looking to convert more consumers, live chat should be among your arsenal. 36% of us said that being able to ask questions in the middle of an online purchase would increase our decision to buy. Consumers prefer the method because they can multi-task while businesses can make the most of their operators being able to chat with several consumers at once.