Customers love self-service — until they don’t. So when they need more serious help, and contact your people, their expectations rise. Are those new expectations being met?
Not as well as customers would like, according to the newest research from CFI Group, which produces the American Customer Satisfaction Index, a quarterly cross-industry measure of customer satisfaction.
Overall, customer satisfaction is holding still at 68 on a 100-point scale. Customers end up disappointed when they contact a front-line professional and the experience isn’t effective or taken care of in the initial call, researchers found.
“Companies should focus operational efforts on giving front-line representatives the tools, the training, and the authority to solve customer problems,” said Sheri Petras, CEO of CFI Group. “Contact center executives must resist the urge to think of the contact center as a self-service channel, and embrace the role of the contact center as an opportunity for customer assistance. Making it easier for customers to reach a human who can solve their problem is paramount to satisfaction.”
CFI’s study looked at what happens before, during, and after the customer experience with customer service pros. This graphic shows more closely how customers feel about overall recent experiences, plus areas where every company can take small steps toward improvement:
Source: CFI Group.
