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EGain Finds Customer Service 'Shockingly' Poor
February 24, 2010
EGain Communications, which sells multichannel customer service and knowledge management software, reports that according to a study it recently conducted, over 70 percent of selected North American enterprise businesses were rated 'below average' or 'poor' in multichannel customer service experience.
EGain has been tracking and reporting on the state of customer service in North America and Europe over the last several years through a mystery-shopping multichannel research study, providing research intended to assess 'the state of multichannel customer experience' within and across phone and eService channels.
The retail sector ranked first in overall customer service, with an 'above average' SQ of 2.3, followed by the communications sector which includes, telecom, cable, satellite and Internet services, with a score of 2.2. All areas except Web self-service declined in performance, with Web self-service posting a slight increase for the overall market from 1.7 in 2009 to 1.9 in 2010, still 'below average.'
A 'shocking' 71 percent of the companies received a 'poor' or 'below average' score in cross-channel customer experience and 42 percent received a 'poor' or 'below average' rating in the cross-agent experience, measured on the phone channel.
Johan Jacobs, research director at Gartner (News - Alert), writes that, 'The customer experience, at every interaction, affects future revenue and profit. Customer experience optimization, therefore, ensures that such customer experiences across channels reinforce the organization's basic brand value proposition, and differentiate its business,' in his research note 'Ten Imperatives for Optimizing the Multichannel Management Customer Experience,' released last October.
Conducted and compiled in late 2009 and early 2010, eGain's '2010 State of Multichannel Customer Service' research evaluates multiple aspects of Web self-service and contact center customer service of what company officials say are '175 enterprises in the U.S. and Canada, many Fortune 1000 companies among them.
All of them had an annual revenue of more than $250 million,' and are equally distributed across the financial services, retail, communications, consumer goods, insurance, healthcare and pharmaceuticals sectors.
EGain has been tracking and reporting on the state of customer service in North America and Europe over the last several years through a mystery-shopping multichannel research study, providing research intended to assess 'the state of multichannel customer experience' within and across phone and eService channels.
The retail sector ranked first in overall customer service, with an 'above average' SQ of 2.3, followed by the communications sector which includes, telecom, cable, satellite and Internet services, with a score of 2.2. All areas except Web self-service declined in performance, with Web self-service posting a slight increase for the overall market from 1.7 in 2009 to 1.9 in 2010, still 'below average.'
A 'shocking' 71 percent of the companies received a 'poor' or 'below average' score in cross-channel customer experience and 42 percent received a 'poor' or 'below average' rating in the cross-agent experience, measured on the phone channel.
Johan Jacobs, research director at Gartner (News - Alert), writes that, 'The customer experience, at every interaction, affects future revenue and profit. Customer experience optimization, therefore, ensures that such customer experiences across channels reinforce the organization's basic brand value proposition, and differentiate its business,' in his research note 'Ten Imperatives for Optimizing the Multichannel Management Customer Experience,' released last October.
Conducted and compiled in late 2009 and early 2010, eGain's '2010 State of Multichannel Customer Service' research evaluates multiple aspects of Web self-service and contact center customer service of what company officials say are '175 enterprises in the U.S. and Canada, many Fortune 1000 companies among them.
All of them had an annual revenue of more than $250 million,' and are equally distributed across the financial services, retail, communications, consumer goods, insurance, healthcare and pharmaceuticals sectors.
David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of David’s articles, please visit his columnist page. He also blogs for TMCnet here.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi
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