What customers want when they contact an organisation – and what they get

Contact centres are key to an organisation’s success, primarily due to being the primary customer touchpoint. 

When customers contact organisations, it is important that the organisation understands what customers most want and value during the interaction. 

What customers want

A recent survey of 1,000 UK customers for the new Exceeding UK Customer Expectations report produced insightful figures in relation to customer experience and contact centres. For instance, when they contact an organisation, customers place these factors in their top 3 requirements: first-time resolution of their question or issue (56%), a fast response time (56%), and friendly (37%) and UK-based (48%) employees.

While these factors are what your contact centre needs to focus on, it should be noted that the relative importance of these factors for customers also depends on their age group.

For example, younger respondents generally placed greater value on friendly support and long opening hours, whereas older customers viewed shorter waiting times and first-contact resolution as crucial factors.

Yet, they get…

The same survey discovered that instead of necessarily receiving what they wanted from contacting an organisation, customers “very often” or “fairly often” faced such issues as long and frequent queues (85%), complicated IVR menus (71%), and frequent change of support representatives (66%). 

Interestingly, 57% of respondents said they “very often” or “fairly often” had problems with hearing and having to repeat themselves, which indicates that there appears to be issues regarding the sound and audio quality of phone calls, too. 

Tailoring contact support according to your customers’ needs

With the above in mind, organisations need to review how their contact centres might be hindering the customer experience, especially in terms of the obstacles listed above. By homing in on customer wants, organisations can offer improved customer experience that goes above and beyond customer expectations. 

Whether such improvements might take the form of upgrading their telephony system for better audio and mic quality, or optimising support processes for shorter queues, organisations can use the results above to inform their strategies on elevating customer experience.

Are you interested in learning more about how to enhance customer experience at your contact centres? If so, please feel free to read more of our customer experience reports at ContactBabel to deepen your understanding of optimising the customer journey.