There is a gap growing at the heart of the agency world, revealed by two pieces of research, one into customer service and the other into sources of trust in brands.

I think they need to be seen side by side to understand this gap in the agency world – what you might call the customer gap.

The first piece of research, from customer service technology company Jacada conducted by YouGov reveals a growing challenge for consumer brands.

Quite simply, expectations and experiences of customer contact centres, either by phone or on-line are, frankly, awful and consumers’ dissatisfaction increasingly fierce.

Jacada/YouGov’s research is clear: 63% of respondents give up when accessing customer support online and 48% on the phone, without having their problem resolved.

A mere 20% feel satisfied by phone helplines. This figure fell to 15% for online support.

Over a third of us expect to get poor service when they call a helpline.
In a separate report into information sources we trust on-line when choosing between brands, the opinions of strangers are now considered more trustworthy than editorial content.

In Nielsen’s annual consumer survey 90% of internet users trust the opinion of friends (no surprise there) but 70% trust the opinion of strangers posted online, well ahead of editorial content as a source of trust (61%). For those of us who have long believed that ‘earned media’ is the most valuable there is, this is a significant shift.

Where’s the gap though? How are these trends connected?

Simple: 91% of consumers will recommend a company with good customer contact according to CFI Group’s Contact Centre Satisfaction Index and the group with the higher index for customer dissatisfaction are also the most highly engaged with social media, 25-44 year olds.

The direct cost to businesses of this poor performance is just as worrying: roughly a third of phone and online queries are not resolved at first attempt, requiring a second approach by the consumer. Aside from the 33% waste of capacity in the contact centre, the impact on word of mouth is incalculable.

The question of how to measure the impact of social media is moving ever closer to the centre of strategy decisions – the customer contact centre is an obvious place to look for an answer.

The ‘customer gap’ for clients and agencies is obvious. Nielsen’s data underlines the Groundswell shift from media influence to customer-to-customer influence and suggests a diminishing role for media agencies yet Jacada/YouGov suggests that customer service functions are the last people you’d have trying to nurture consumers empowered by social media.

New kinds of agencies will need to be developed to bring together media skills with customer contact skills. BrandAlert aims to be at the forefront of this.

Nigel Sarbutts
Managing Director
BrandAlert

Comments...