6 Pieces of Research Every Customer Service Pro Should Know

• Stat(s): A majority (61%) of Americans report that quality customer service is more important to them in today's economic environment and will spend an average of 9% more when they believe a company provides excellent service.
• Source: American Express Global Customer Service Barometer, August 2010

• Stat(s): 17% will leave you after a single service mess up; 40% will leave you after two blunders and 28% will leave after the third mistake. That adds up to an overwhelming 85% of your business that could potentially be lost due to poor customer service.
• Source: BIG Research, Jun 2010

• Stat: 45% of consumers prefer to communicate with customer service over NON-telephone channels (i.e. web self service, social media, email, etc).
• Source: Ovum, Genesys "Global Cross Channel Survey", March 2010
• Stat(s): 36% of online US customers crave self-reliance for service. That preference is even stronger among younger customers: 46% of 18- to 29-year-olds and 42% of 30- to 42-year-olds prefer to be self-reliant. Only 28% of respondents prefer to resolve a service issue by speaking to someone on the phone.
• Source: Forrester Research

• Stat: 85% of the contact centers observed by Gartner indicated that the multiple interaction channels are not synchronized.
• Source: Gartner, February 2010

• Stat: The technology behind interaction guidance involves systems that extract data regarding the customer and the products owned by the customer, and suggest the best flow for the dialogue. Automating the assembly of actionable information on the Agent Desktop can result in agent training time dropping 25% to 40%.
• Source: Gartner, February 2010

• Stats: By the end of 2014, 45% of contact centers will have integrated some type of social media support – monitoring social networking sites for mentions of a company/product, responding to blog or Twitter posts with an invitation to participate in a survey, incorporating tweets as a means of communicating directly with the contact center (currently, between 6.5% of contact centers have a Social CRM Strategy in place).
• Source: DMG Consulting, July 2010
• Stat: 79% of the Fortune 100 are already present and listening (over social media platforms), using at least of one of the main social platforms to communicate with their customers.
• Source: Burson-Marsteller Evidence-Based Communications Group

These are just a few pieces of research that can help guide your customer initiatives. Making note of them may help you stay away from becoming a bad customer service viral phenomenon.