Enghouse Interactive has released a new report which highlights changes in customer communication preferences over the past two years.
Titled “The Changing Landscape of Customer Communications”, the report surveyed both IT professionals and customers to gain insights into evolving perspectives of CX since the onset of the pandemic. One clear-cut trend is a growing preference for digital communication, with 95% of IT professionals reporting that they had to make changes to their customer service channels.
The report also reveals a strong focus across organisations on enhancing the quality of the customer service experiences, with 59% of organisations increasing investment in customer service operations over the past two years.
However, customers still think companies can do better, as only 17% of consumers said that customer service had improved during the pandemic.
These results show a disconnect between what customers value and what organisations think they value.
Understandably, the pandemic brought on many challenges for both organisations and customers, especially at times when face-to-face interactions were not possible.
To combat these challenges, companies focused on investing in customer service, with 25% saying their main focus was improving the quality and ease of access to frequently asked questions (FAQ). 24% of organisations also invested in hiring new skilled staff and 23% focused on training existing staff in new ways of working.
As customers’ communications preferences changed, in the post-pandemic era, only 57% of companies expect to communicate with their customers via email, compared to 71% in the pre-pandemic times.
The pandemic allowed new digital channels to take centre stage, mainly social media and SMS.
Finally, according to the report, social media messaging is expected to double in usage from 21% at the beginning of 2021, to 42% by 2024.
Other Key Findings
The report also reveals the challenges organisations had to overcome while adapting to new ways of customer communication. Topping the list were cyber-security issues (33%) and poor systems integration (22%).
An overwhelming 91% of organisations encountered challenges when implementing new customer service technologies, such as ensuring systems and solutions are fully secure (41%) and integrating them with the existing infrastructure (28%).
In gathering such statistics, Enghouse Interactive aimed to show the complexity of changes in customer communications and what companies can do to prepare for the future.
