When it comes to support channels, phone and email still rule (for now)

Posted by John Moore on February 4, 2010

2 comments | 1391 reads

As you may remember, I kicked off my survey of customer support preferences and usage patterns a couple of days ago. While I will continue running the survey through the end of March, and the sample size is still less than 100, I wanted to share some very early data. If you have not yet taken the survey, please do. If you have not yet shared it with friends and family, please do. Let’s gather as much information as possible (I share).

The majority of the respondents have dealt with support issues in the last month, they have not based their answers on old experiences.

Also, the bulk of the respondents are from North America, not surprising given this is where I am located.

The majority of those responding still use phone and e-mail to get the job done. Now is that because they choose this path or because that is the path provided? Time will tell and I’ll share my opinions when the poll does eventually close. However, let me leave you with this. Over 67% of the respondents were satisfied with their experience. Is that really good enough?

John

John Moore

Founder and CEO of The Lab. An open government strategist, consultant, and analyst. Part writer, speaker, and educator. Other interests? Mobile and CRM.

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Bob Thompson

February 4, 2010

transitions take time

John, thanks for sharing this research.

Last year we fielded a study with US adult consumers to understand their preferences for support.

As you can see in this chart, consumers still prefer people-powered interaction (phone, email, face-to-face) over fully automated channels. And while there were some differences by age, even younger consumers like to connect with real people.

Source: CustomerThink 2009

However, we also found that usage of online channels like social, blogging and automated chat were growing faster. So this picture will no doubt change over time (note how chat has become a key channel in the past few years) but perhaps not as fast as the "use Twitter for customer service" hype would suggest!

John Moore

February 4, 2010

Great data, thanks Bob

Thank you for posting that additional data point. I hope to continue collecting much more information, which I will share with the crowd, but good to see our data is in-line.

John F Moore

My Blog: http://johnfmoore.wordpress.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/JohnFMoore
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/johnfmoore
Skype: cto.john.moore

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