Conduent Survey Finds Even Digital Channels Need a Human Touch

Brands can improve consumer experience by leveraging personalization and empathy from agents in digital interactions

In recognition of this year’s Customer Service Week, Conduent Incorporated, a global technology-led business process solutions company, released its 2022 State of Consumer Experience Report. According to the report, 24% of consumers are willing to end association with a brand after just one bad experience. The positive impact of customer service is also real with 22% of consumers willing to spend more because of a good experience.

“Outstanding customer service is critical to the overall consumer experience and a key factor in building consumer relationships, growing revenue and differentiating brands from their competitors,” said Jeff Weiner, Vice President, General Manager for Customer Experience Management at Conduent. “Human touch is important and can be a differentiator for consumers in customer experience digital channels. Companies win when they strategically leverage data about the end-to-end customer experience to understand the consumer, are knowledgeable and demonstrate empathy – all at the same time.”

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Key findings from the Conduent report:

Consumers want conversational customer experiences with 65% of consumers wanting an agent responding in digital channels like chat.

• 70% of consumers describe customer experience as excellent if they have either a strong relationship with the brand or an interaction that evokes a feeling of “happiness.”
• 74% of consumers said brand interactions were successful because the agent was helpful, which was more important to them than efficiency (53%).

Consumer trust of customer service channels grew

• Trust in digital interactions grew from 47% pre-pandemic to 76% post-pandemic.
• Trust in both AI and agent chats grew from 39% pre-pandemic to 65% post-pandemic.
• Trust in self-serve options grew from 39% pre-pandemic to 73% post-pandemic.

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Brands can drive loyalty by understanding customers

The survey suggests there are two ways to win a consumer’s loyalty – being very helpful (49%) and having all the consumer’s information available (34%). In the past 18 months, brands report they are focused on customer service initiatives to increase customer loyalty and attract new customers including:

• training and enhanced processes to handle more complexity, offer more empathy and better personalize interactions (50%).
• greater emphasis on customer feedback and identifying customer experience gaps (55%).

“To deliver excellent consumer experiences, brands must create a personalized experience while empowering agents to be empathetic and problem-solvers,” said Weiner. “To truly resonate with consumers, customer experience needs to maintain ‘the human element’ and demonstrate expertise. That’s why every year we celebrate Customer Service Week. We celebrate our 27,000 customer service agents who deliver great experiences in every interaction.”