Don’t Focus All Your Customer Experience Efforts Online

Research has shown that consumers use a combination of both traditional and digital channels to contact companies.

With a global move to digital customer contact thanks to the millennial generation, you could be forgiven for thinking that you should update all your customer contact channels and provide a solely digital experience.

However, new research has found that consumers continue to use a combination of traditional and digital channels to reach out to companies, depending on the issue at hand, and so it’s imperative to ensure a smooth customer journey across all contact points, rather than focusing your efforts on a single channel or digital upgrade.

PwC’s Customer Care Evolution report also showed that consumers use different channels for different issues. Traditional channels, such as a live agent phone call or retail store, are found to be better suited for billing issues and questions, as well as support for products and services. Digital channels, such as email, online chat at social media, are preferred for changing the account status and handling website and mobile app issues.

Regardless of channel, consumers define a good customer experience as one that quickly resolves their issues or concerns, which is their main priority. If there are too many steps to take or the communication takes too much time, the consumer will consider changing channels to get the job done.

And if the response is all-together too slow, the company rep’s attitude is poor or the problem isn’t resolved at all, this can lead to a bad customer experience, which in turn can prompt the consumer to share their negative experience across multiple channels and never purchasing from this company again.

Consumers are more inclined to penalise a company for a bad experience, with 71 per cent of those questioned admitting that they share their experience with others and 56 per cent saying that they didn’t purchase from the company again. In contrast, consumers are less likely to share a good experience and it led to 47 per cent of customer to make a repeat purchase.

So with more consumers sharing a bad experience with other (potential) customers and turning away from a company forever, it’s important that you ensure a quick resolution – across all channels – to any problems that may arise.