The latest report from
American Customer Satisfaction Index (Michigan School of Business) reports following:Customer dissatisfaction with quality goods and services offered in marketplace is more than a nuisance. The US economy is heavily dependent on increases in consumer spending. Such increases are hard to come by when consumers become less satisfied. The ACSI fell dramatically in fourth quarter of 2004. The Index now stands at 73.6 – dropping nearly 1% compared with third quarter. One would have to go back almost seven years to find an equivalent decline.
While high levels of customer satisfaction typically lead to company growth, it is not always case that business growth leads to satisfied customers. In many cases, opposite is true.
What’s interesting with this study is that since 1995 customer service has consistently not made grade, and services continue to top list in terms of customer dissatisfaction. Remember we’re all in service business!
Taken even further, growing customer dissatisfaction with contact center service levels is boosting use of IVRs as 20% of customers opt for self service channels over live agents. That’s 1 in 5 customers bypassing human because of poor service. (CRM Today, 2/18/05).
From past newsletters we know impact and cost of repeat calls, bad call experiences, poor service, (if you don’t go to http://www.human-technologies.com/newsletter_archive.html). What can you do starting right now?
First, how and what are you measuring for customer satisfaction? Measurement systems must not only be in step with customer's preferred communication channel, but effectiveness of service delivery should be immediate. What does this mean? If interaction is via phone, a survey should be via phone, not by a subsequent email. Are you actually asking customer for feedback on their experience—what is now jargoned as ‘the voice of customer?’ Merely using metrics will give you guidelines, but could be false security. Go to source. Ask your customers!
