Four in ten shoppers have needed to get in touch with a business’s customer support with a query or complaint in the last three days, according to new research.
In a bid to understand the state of customer care post-pandemic, business text messaging provider Esendex surveyed 5,000 consumers worldwide to discover how, how frequently and why they tend to contact companies.
Internationally, 41% of consumers have got in touch with a firm’s customer service department over the past three days – rising to 63% over the past week.
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When participants were asked what they contact a business about most often, the following came out as the top reasons globally:
- Delivery query or update (33%)
- Order query or update (26%)
- Refund/exchange query or update (25%)
- Billing/payment issue (22%)
- Looking for more information (19%)
Zach Van Way, Direct of Sales at Esendex, comments: “Our research shows that in the USA alone, more than half of all customers will contact a company with a delivery query or update.
“Customer service teams need to be prepared for this kind of traffic, especially as our research also shows that speed of response is the number one thing customers rate the most helpful when contacting a business.
“By employing an omnichannel approach and adding automation into parts of the process, businesses will be able to operate more efficiently, while being able to dedicate more time to issues that cannot be resolved via self-serve options, such as FAQ pages or video tutorials, or with help from a chatbot”.
The findings of the survey, which have been published in a report, also reveal the biggest frustrations that shoppers have when getting in touch with customer support. These are:
- Unhelpful/didn’t resolve the issue
- Took too long to respond/answer
- Going round in circles/repeating myself to different people
- Chatbot timing out and having to explain the query again
- Being treated like a ticket or number rather than a human being
More than 47% of US shoppers would also consider that they’ve waited too long if it takes more than five hours for a business response, highlighting our demand for an always-on culture.
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