Poor service impacts consumer brand loyalty

AI automated contact centre company Replicant has released the results of a new survey into customer service.

Based on an online survey of 1,000 US adults who have interacted with customer service within the past six months, the study found that 91% of consumers had reported they have experienced poor customer service in the last six months.

In contact centres, 56% reported the most common form of poor customer service as being long wait times, with 70% of respondents saying it was now harder to reach a real person that it was at the beginning of the pandemic.

Other key findings included the fact that:

32% report the average time they spend waiting on hold has doubled compared to before the pandemic
70% of consumers are irritated or angry with a hold time of more than 30 minutes
76% of consumers saying a poor customer service experience negatively impacts their perception of a brand

“This data shows that customers are looking for better service, notice when it’s poor, and voluntarily switch brands as a result,” said Gadi Shamia, CEO and co-founder of Replicant.

“Spikes in call volume and challenges in staffing call centres worsened during the pandemic and are now the new normal, so companies must think of a new path forward.

Replicant offers an automated contact centre platform utilising intent detection and natural language processing technologies to more quickly resolve customer enquiries.

The company last year closed a $27mn series A led by Norwest Venture Partners, alongside Bloomberg Beta, Costanoa Ventures, Atomic, and State Farm Ventures, bringing total funding to $36mn. It said it would use the funds to grow research and development and its go-to-market teams.

“Replicant is solving some major challenges for any company that values customer service,” said Scott Beechuk, partner at Norwest Venture Partners, at the time.

“Today’s customers expect instant, personalised service, and Replicant’s conversational AI platform delivers this in spades. We’ve been blown away by the company’s growth fuelled by the exploding demand for automation and efficiency gains across the world’s largest contact centres.”

Source: CX Today