Most companies are aware that the importance of providing a good customer service experience cannot be understated. Increasingly, more and more consumers are making purchasing decisions based on a company’s reputation for providing good customer service. And in many cases, the customer service experience is either more important or just as important as the product or service a company provides.
Important Factors of Customer Service
In a recent Interactions study, 73% of respondents indicated that they have at some point selected a company to purchase from based solely on its reputation for providing good customer service. This means that consumers are viewing customer experience as one of the most important factors in making purchasing decisions. In our survey, the top three most important factors for customers when deciding whether to purchase from a company were:
- The company makes a superior product or service
- The pricing of the product or service is competitive or affordable
- The company has a reputation for providing good customer service or support
What makes a good customer experience?
While the vast majority of companies are aware that it’s important to provide good customer experiences in order to retain customers and encourage loyalty, many are less clear about what a good experience actually means. And although this may differ from consumer to consumer, most respondents indicate pretty clearly that there are two factors that contribute most heavily to the evaluation of a customer experience: efficiency and a human touch. 43% of respondents said that ‘being able to reach a human to resolve [their] issue’ was the most important factor in evaluating a customer experience, while 42% said it was ‘getting [their] issue resolved as quickly as possible.’
What role do channels play?
With the emergence of so many new customer service channels, many companies struggle with where to allocate their resources. Although it’s important for companies to be available where and when their customers need them, the evidence shows that the overwhelming majority of consumers still use the phone to resolve customer service issues. In this survey, 66% of respondents indicated that they most often use the phone to resolve a customer service issue, followed by web chat at 16%.
With so many consumers ranking customer experiences high on their list of decision-making factors, it’s critical for companies to make the right investments in improving their customer service experiences. Download our latest research to learn more important takeaways about the value of providing good customer service experiences.
