Telephone is still widely perceived by consumers to be the customer service channel most likely to deliver a positive outcome, new research has found.
According to FM Outsource’s Make Every Conversation Count report, 48% of people believe phone is the most effective customer service channel. It is significantly more popular among consumers than tech-enabled channels including live chat (21%), email (21%), WhatsApp (6%) and chatbots (3%).
Interestingly, despite its reputation as an effective route for customers who have been let down by companies via other channels, only 2% of people said that public social media posts are the most likely to deliver a positive outcome.
When asked for the channel they believe is most likely to deliver a poor outcome, chatbots emerged as the least popular (36%), followed by automated speech recognition (21%), suggesting consumers are of the belief that their problem is most likely to be resolved quickly and efficiently if they are able to converse directly with a human operator.
As part of the research, respondents were also asked for their preferred customer service channel across a variety of sectors, if a positive outcome was guaranteed.
Martin Brown, CCO at FM Outsource, said: “The research highlights some definite scepticism among consumers when it comes to dealing with customer service, with particular wariness around new technologies such as chatbots. This is most likely down to previous bad experiences, however, this doesn’t need to be the case and businesses should not be put off.”
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