Study: Neither self service nor call centers fully satisfy German and UK customers

2010-06-11 - When consumers in the UK or in Germany make use of web self service they are likely to give up without having their issues resolved. A multinational study conducted on behalf of Jacada has revealed some similarities and differences between participants from Germany and the UK when it comes to customer service.

According to the Jacada research, almost two thirds of UK respondents admit to "giving up" when accessing customer service online without having their issues resolved. Germans are slightly more successful with the use of self service on the internet with 43 percent having to go offline again - empty-handed.

The line is not dead yet
In both countries, for urgent issues the phone is the preferred channel even among younger age groups with UK customers being more phone-oriented than the German study participants. For urgent or serious problems 67 percent of UK consumers want to call someone (53 percent in Germany). However, more than eight out of ten Germans asked consider their issues as serious (six out of ten in the UK).

Being asked "for which types of companies it is important to have access to a real person instead of using online customer support when an urgent or serious issues needs to be solved" UK consumers once again showed their favor towards the telephone. For instance, 80 percent expect banks to have Customer Service Representatives available for urgent issues while only 38 percent of Germans stated that this was important to them.

Many calls are avoidable
Be it in Germany or in the UK - a lot of calls with frustrated customers could be avoided by improving internal processes. According to the study, 76 percent of those questioned in the UK said they had to contact customer service because of an error made by the company in areas such as billing, technical issues, problems with delivery, or a missed service call. In Germany 61 percent had to contact customer service out of the same reasons.

When their issues are not being resolved, both German and UK customers tend to lose their temper every once in a while. One in four of those questioned in the UK admitted to losing their temper with an agent during a customer service call during the last twelve months. Germans seem to be slightly more patient with 17 percent actually having lost their temper during the call.

Dissatisfied consumers are lost customers
Customers in both countries are very similar when it comes to quitting a business relationship because of bad service. According to the research, 29 percent in the UK and 27 percent in Germany said they stopped using a company’s products or services because of that reason.

About the survey
For the study, 2,100 adults in the UK and 1,012 in Germany were questioned on behalf of unified desktop provider Jacada on a number of key customer service issues.




Author(s): Sarah Dreps

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