Member Article

Keeping the customer satisfied? It’s a positive outlook in the UK

Nick Peart, EMEA Marketing Director at Zendesk discusses the latest UK customer satisfaction ratings from the recent global benchmarks report from Zendesk

We all know that customers globally are becoming ever more demanding in their requirements and sophisticated in their expectation, due to many factors, most notably the rise of smartphone device use and the explosion of the social channels. And rightly so. In today’s fragile economic climate, companies need to ensure that customers remain at the heart of everything they do. When customers are happy with the service they receive, they come back for more, fact.

So with this in mind, it was pleasing to note in findings from our recent global Benchmarks report Q2 2013, not only that customer satisfaction globally is on the rebound following a year in decline, but that, in the UK we rank an impressive 6th within in the global league table. Contrary to popular belief, we do give service with a smile. Unlike a survey or ‘expert opinion’ our Benchmark is based on actual customer service and support interactions from more than 16,000 companies (across 125 countries) that opted to participate. It measures key metrics around customer support efficiency, customer self-service behavior, and levels of customer engagement.

Economy on the Rise

The turnaround in customer satisfaction agreeably coincides with recent reports of the UK economy purportedly “on the mend” according to Chancellor George Osborne. Output in the UK grew in the construction, manufacturing, services and agriculture sectorsaccording to the Office of National Statistics. Compared with global results from our report, Education, IT and Property Services had the biggest global inclines in client satisfaction. Whichever the industry sector, it is clear that greater confidence in the economy will have almost certainly impacted on the rise in customer satisfaction. Happy shoppers make happier customers.

Help yourself?

The appeal of visiting online, knowledge forums unrelated to the business is growing, and we noted a positive increase in the utilisation of the self-service function; 67% of consumers now prefer helping themselves rather than speaking to a support agent and an impressive 91% said they would use a company’s knowledge base if it was available and tailored their needs. This represents a huge step in the right direction for businesses and one that we have been championing since our inception, as it empowers the consumer and creates cost efficiency within the business. Providing more meaningful and practical information at the outset allows for a lesser number of agent enquiries, which ultimately means less resource. We must also of course appreciate that the average consumer has grown in confidence when it comes to approaching technology. Multiscreen environments and the explosion of the social channels have allowed us to increase our IT prowess, though experimentation and engaging interactively online, increasing our confidence and social voice.

To further explore this trend we introduced a new metric to give a true reflection of the market; the self-service score which captured the level at which a customer’s base is engaged in self-service behavior. The higher the score, the more the customer was taking care of themselves. Not surprisingly, companies that had the biggest successes in this area were social media, software and manufacturing – all industries working predominantly in the cloud.

The Future is Mobile

We know that mobile and tablet usage will continue to be the dominant force in our constantly connected, multiscreen lives. In the mobile and telecommunications sectors, it was revealed that when it came to self-service in the telecommunications sectors 84% of interactions were sourced from mobile devices and within social media 57% - a clear indication that the PC and even the laptop may soon be a thing of the past.

As a company dedicated to bringing companies and customers closer together, to build relationships that last a lifetime, this is all good news, and we hope to see even bigger increases in customer satisfaction at the next Benchmark. Until then, I hope that companies take note of the findings and employ the few simple steps that can be taken to greatly improve their customer service function; namely improving self-service options – analyse the incoming data to identify FAQ’s, and act on them, and design their interfaces to be mobile friendly, because if you can’t see it, you won’t buy it.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Zendesk .