The Biggest Contact Center Pain Point? Inconsistent Information

New research reveals the biggest pain points of customer service journeys through contact centers.

Conducted by Forrester Consulting, on behalf of eGain, the online survey was administered to 5,000 US consumers who were each asked about the worst aspects of getting help from customer service contact centers.

Allowed to pick up to two options, the following were cited as the biggest pain points:

• Different customer service agents give different answers (41%)
• Customer service agents do not know the answer (34%)
• Can't find answer on website (31%)

With an overwhelming 41 percent, it was consistency in answers given by contact agents that proved to be the most frustrating part for consumers when it comes to communicating with contact centers.

While the survey covered a broad set of industries – retail, communication service providers, banking and financial services, property and casualty insurance, health insurance, healthcare providers, utilities, and government – there was a clear difference across sectors.

For consistency of answers across agents Government (56%), technology (47%), cell phone (46%) and communications service providers (45%) performed the worst.

The best performing sector in this area was retail, though a third (33%) of consumers still complained about this issue.

Agents not knowing the answer at all was highlighted the worst in offline retail (47%) and technology sectors (47%).

The best-performing sector, property, casualty and life insurance, had a quarter (25%) of consumers complaining about this issue.

Younger consumers are less forgiving of agents that are not knowledgeable and two-thirds (40%) of Gen Y consumers did not find agents to be knowledgeable versus less than a quarter (23%) of seniors.

Finally, the easy with which information was found on a company’s website was complained about the most for online retail (40%) and banks (36%).

And over a quarter (27%) of consumers thought that this was a major pain point even in the best-performing sector, technology.

The fact that about a fourth of consumers would still complain about inconsistent or hard to find answers in the best performing sectors included within research highlights the importance of clear communication within the company and integrating the contact center within your omni-channel strategy.