Transversal’s latest annual Multi-channel Customer Service Study shows:

• Poor quality response accuracy. less than half (46 per cent) of the routine customer service questions emailed to 100 leading organisations answered adequately.
• Poor response times. The average time to respond to email was nearly 4 days (46 hours), with 28 per cent of organisations not even replying at all. But some companies responded with useful answers within 10 minutes.

Transversal believe that the figures show a major deterioration since 2006, when email successfully answered 60 per cent of queries and kept customers waiting less time – on average 33 hours - for a reply.

In some case improved speed has resulted in poorer accuracy. For example, in 2006, utilities companies took an average of 102 hours to reply to email with 70 per cent of replies answering the question. While 2007 email response times improved to 53 hours, only 15 per cent of replies answered the question!

• View statistics on Customer service Email response times

Response time survey methodology

Transversal’s study evaluated 100 leading UK companies in the banking, telecoms, insurance, travel, consumer electronics, grocery retail, fashion retail, CD/DVD retail, consumer electronics retail and utilities sectors for their ability to answer simple routine questions, via email, their website and by phone.

Multichannel customer preferences

In a separate study, Upton (2008) reports on research where 1,000 UK consumers aged 18+ were surveyed to identify the role and importance of customer services and communications for online businesses.

Despite the growing popularity of email as a communication tool, 53% of those interviewed still prefer to communicate with businesses over the telephone, particularly for service enquiries, compared with 48% for email and 16% for traditional mail. However, when asked about their experiences, three out of ten UK consumers stated they found it difficult to locate contact details on websites.

Surprisingly, 53% of consumers consider three minutes waiting time a satisfactory period to speak with an agent over the telephone. Consumers particularly disliked ringing a contact centre only to be met with a computerised answering service.

As Upton notes, replacing a skilled operator with an automated service might save money in the short term, however, in the long term companies risk losing brand advocacy and sales. Additionally, customers believe 24 hours is a respectable amount of time to wait for a response when contacting a business via email.

He concludes: “Overall the research shows that in this era of multi-communication, consumers are no longer allied to any particular mode of communication. They will select the most convenient or appropriate channel even if the retailer trades solely online.

As a result, brands need to provide their contact centre agents with the tools to seamlessly combine different communication channels such as telephone, email, vmail, web chat and SMS to communicate with the consumer and meet their expectations of service.

Upton, N. (2008) Online customer service. What’s New in Marketing E-newsletter, Issue 65, January 2008. Available online at www.wnim.com