New data from Dixa, a leading customer engagement platform, has today revealed that brands are struggling to meet evolving consumer demands and expectations in the realm of customer service.
Based on a cohort of 3000 consumers and 1,500 service agents within the United States (US) and United Kingdom (UK), the findings shed light on what brands should do to reconnect with their customers during the upcoming holiday season and beyond.
Quantifying the impact of bad customer service
A large majority of consumers (66%) say companies are still not getting customer service right, and a further 63% feel constantly frustrated when interacting with customer service agents. Consumers’ top frustrations include: being passed through to multiple service agents (59%), having to repeat details of the issue they are in contact about (53%) and long hold times (40%).
The cumulative result is that, after just one poor experience, 92% of consumers say they would stop shopping with that brand if they could. As the holiday period becomes top of mind for consumers, brands are looking to ensure a profitable period to counteract previous quarter losses and also move economies past mid-cycle and into peak phase recovery in 2022. Getting the customer experience right is key as more than three quarters (83%) of consumers reported they’d spend more money with a company if they received better customer service.
Has Covid-19 widened the disconnect?
Around two thirds (61%) of consumers have had their expectations of CX increase since the onset of the pandemic, with 34% now expecting better support across digital channels. A further 25% of consumers want a better balance between human interaction and digital tech solutions and 22% now expect issues to be resolved faster, highlighting the lasting impact the pandemic has had on consumer demands.
Mads Fosselius, CEO and co-founder of Dixa, said: “Brands have long begun incorporating omnichannel and multiexperience to form an interconnected online community for their consumer base. Yet, many brands have clearly forgotten what it takes to forge a community – real connection – or in other words, great customer service. It is the most important driver of profits for brands, and its significance has grown in tandem with the pandemic as a non-negotiable baseline requirement for companies.”
“While the quality of a product or service once remained powerful enough to establish a loyal consumer base, consumer demands are evolving alongside the fast-moving pace of technology and are driving the direction of brand success in today’s socio-economic climate. This has been ramped up even further since the pandemic, but it’s clear that the majority of brands are yet to fully recognise and act on an ongoing shift in expectations.”
Looking ahead to 2022: brands need to reconnect with their customers
As the delivery of exceptional customer support continues to be the outlier as opposed to the norm, Dixa has launched a new report – Reconnecting the Customer Experience – to help brands address the clear disconnect. The report provides customer and service agent informed solutions and insights, as well as highlights new trends that are expected to emerge in 2022.
To download the full report, please visit: https://www.dixa.com/page/reconnecting-the-customer-experience/
About Dixa
Dixa is a customer engagement platform that creates value for brands and customers in a conversational, friendly, and engaging way called Customer Friendship™. Established in Copenhagen, Denmark in 2015, Dixa was founded on the principle that there must be a better way to do customer service, one that allowed the creation of value-driven experiences for customers as well as empowered agents to do more than ticketing for the business. In February of 2021, the company acquired the Australian knowledge platform startup, Elevio to empower agents as well as customers with AI-optimized knowledge base and contextual experiences.
