Service headache: Staff sickness most serious issue for customer support

Employee absence is the biggest pain in the neck for organisations and the major issue affecting service delivery and customer experience.

Cognito’s survey of 200 business managers responsible for mobile workers in the UK showed that sick days ranked as the most common bugbear affecting service delivery (39%), followed by traffic congestion (37%) and unavailability of staff (36%).

The retail, distribution and transport sector were shown to be the sectors most drained by the sickness bug, the research showed.

However, the size of the organisation doesn’t change the issues that affect service delivery/experience with managers responsible for both less than 50 staff (36%) and over 50 staff (43%) both ticked off with the effects.

Over half (67%) of respondents also reported that absenteeism was shown to affect service delivery a small amount whilst 24% said it had a large impact and 10% no impact, the figures showed.

Meanwhile, respondents said they were itching to have most visibility of customer interaction/satisfaction (37%). Organisations with fewer than 50 staff would like more visibility of customer interaction/satisfaction (39%) whilst those with over 50 would like to further examine real-time performance levels (33%).

Jonathan Chevallier, strategic development director at Cognito, said: “The survey results clearly show that visibility of customer interaction and satisfaction is something organisations need and want more of.

“If unavailability of staff and traffic most commonly affects service delivery, you can manage both with better real-time insight. Focusing on visibility and employee engagement will obviously help decrease absenteeism and pre-empt service shortfalls.”