The two biggest customer service gripes are having to repeat conversations with multiple call centre agents and being subjected to rude and inexperienced personnel, according to a new report.
The online poll undertaken by customer
analytics software provider ClickFox revealed that a huge 41% of respondents resented having to constantly repeat themselves when being passed from pillar to post, while 13.9% were deeply underwhelmed by ignorant staff. Third on the dissatisfaction list was being kept on hold for long periods of time, cited by 9% of respondents.
The report entitled ‘Customer Tipping Point Survey: How much is poor customer service costing your business?’ said: “The abundance of consumers choosing repeat contacts as most frustrating underscores the importance of first contact resolution as a performance metric to measure both customer effort and operational efficiency. The more ‘effort’ expended by the customer to complete an interaction, the higher the cost to the business and the lower the loyalty to the brand.”
The most frustrating organisations to interact with, however, were cable companies (mentioned by 25.9% of those questioned), followed by telephone providers (18.5%) and healthcare bodies (14.2%).
As to how consumers reacted when being subjected to poor customer service, the top choice was escalating the matter to a supervisor or manager (54%). Second in line was telling family or friends about the experience (52%) and third was taking their business elsewhere (40%). A mere one in five said that they would choose to write about their frustrations on social media sites such as Facebook or Twitter.
“All of these reactions result in increased operations costs, lost revenue and severe brand damage, highlighting the critical role of service operations in maintaining and driving bottom-line growth for organisations,” the report said.
Surprisingly, however, about a third of respondents indicated that they were more likely to take part in a customer service-related survey if they had had a good experience compared with 30.2% who said they were more likely to give their opinions after having had a bad time.
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While I agree that rude or unhelpful staff is annoying, as well as then being passed from pillar to post while they find an operator who can actually help you, to even be able to experience this level of dissatisfaction relies on GETTING THROUGH TO AN OPERATOR IN THE FIRST PLACE.
Virgin Media are particularly poor when it comes to this. It's like a battle of ruddy attrition.
AND YOU HAVE THE SAME SONG ON LOOP OVER AND OVER AGAIN.
Unbelievable.
Surely it's a case of time management. They must know that during weekdays they will be most busy during 6-8, when people return from work and need to resolve an issue. So get more operators on the [***] phones.
They make me furious.
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