ContactBabel commissioned a study with Aurora Market Research that has revealed the most vital factors from the customer point of view when they first make contact with a company.
The majority of those surveyed said the most important CX factor when engaging with a contact centre was that their question or query was resolved, with 49% of 16–24-year-olds, 42% of 25–34-year-olds, 54% of 35-45-year-olds, 56% of 45-54-year-olds and 60% of 55-64-year olds and 64% of pensioners agreeing.
Short queues and wait times came next on the list for the most important CX factors, followed by customers speaking to UK-based agents.
Polite and friendly employees and the query being handled by one agent came next.
The least important CX factors were a choice of channels to communicate on and the business offering long opening hours.
The study also included snapshots of demographics and gave an across the board result. e. Aggregating the results allows an understanding of which factors were placed in the top three overall, while also providing insight on age-related opinion.
The research has some interesting findings when comparing consumer attitudes to a survey which asked businesses about what they considered customers valued the most:
- Both businesses and consumers agree that first contact resolution is the most important single factor impacting upon customer experience when contacting a business
- A short queue/wait time for response is also seen as being an important part of the customer experience
- Having UK-based employees is seen as far more important to customers than businesses believe, especially for older demographics
The report read: “When considering these findings from the perspective of the various age ranges, the importance of first contact resolution is considerably higher in the older age ranges, as is having UK-based employees.
“There is also a pattern that older age-groups are less likely to be happy with being passed between agents. Younger customers place very significant importance on longer opening hours, and are also more likely to value having a choice of ways to communicate with the organisation. Further evidence for this age group’s valuing of its time can be seen in relatively high importance being placed upon short call/web chat duration.
“However, the youngest age group are not willing to sacrifice courteous service for time saved, as they are also the group that most frequently places ‘polite and friendly employees’ in the top three factors. At first glance, omnichannel / multichannel does not seem to place particularly highly – ‘having a choice of ways to communicate’ is only placed in the top 3 CX factors by around 25% of consumers (although it is more important than it was in 2018 when the first of these surveys was done).
“However, omnichannel is vital to the most important factor of all – having the issue resolved first-time – as true omnichannel provides a single view of the customer across channels, allowing seamless movement between channels without changing agents, losing context or making the customer repeat themselves.”
The survey polled 1,000 UK consumers.
