Traditional Firms Still Struggling With Customer Support: Study
Customer experience is new normal today. And to keep up with this trend, companies are expected to offer the most sophisticated customer support system, where they can support, engage and retain customers on an ongoing basis. A new study shows that traditional consumer facing companies continue to struggle with Customer Experience. Those who are missing the boat are losing out in the modern digital landscape, and experts believe these players would gradually fade with time.
The study done by Zendesk states that a company’s age isn’t the primary factor linked to its approach to customer support. In fact, plenty of younger companies are still working to modernize their support operations, while several established companies have already mastered the digital landscape. The high performers also view their support software as a platform, using apps, integrations and APIs to give agents the information they need to move quickly, maintaining consistency and context across channels, said the study.
For both Digital Natives and Digital Transformers, Zendesk Benchmark data shows the companies that face the most challenges are those that directly serve consumers. Traditional enterprise companies that are B2C have a higher volume of requests, lower customer satisfaction scores and the slowest reply times of all company types, implying a digital transformation is most urgently necessary for this group.
At the same time, Digital Native companies in the B2C category still face high customer expectations while handling a massive volume of requests. They see nearly eight times the volume of customer requests and have an average customer satisfaction score that is nearly 10 percentage points lower than companies serving other businesses or operating internally. While these large companies tend to take full advantage of their support software, they see a constant need to innovate and scale to keep up with changing customer expectations.
Digital Natives and Digital Transformers also differ in their self-service capabilities. Digital Native help centers have twice as many articles and a ratio of self-service content views to total ticket volume that is five times higher than that of more traditional enterprise companies. The takeaway for Digital Transformers is that investing more in self-service can lower costs, drive better customer satisfaction scores and improve agent efficiency.
KT Prasad, Country Sales Director, Zendesk India stated, “The Zendesk Benchmark Guide findings perfectly mirror the trend in India. In fact, we have been witnessing heightened interest from enterprise and traditional companies in adopting digital technologies to help them scale. While India presents a growing breed of Digital Natives, I don’t think the Digital Transformers are far behind in coming up to speed and embracing avenues such as Omnichannel and self-help when it comes to Customer Experience.”
“Regardless of where a company is in its journey, understanding what customers want and how to deliver is critical for businesses to succeed,” said Ted Smith, director, market insights at Zendesk. The learning from the study can help them position better and create the best experiences for their customers, summed up Smith.
