TeleTech Survey Uncovers Major Flaws in Customer Experience Strategies

Provider of technology-enabled customer experience solutions, TeleTech Holdings, has announced the results of its Customer Experience Expectations study which found that industries such as telecommunications, health care, financial services, and automobile sellers are severely lacking in customer experience strategies. Even with the social media boom, and easy access to the opinions of many millions of customers at once, many customers continue to not listen to what customers are saying. And even when they are, two-thirds of respondents said they don’t expected responses when they post feedback to companies on social media.

“For many consumers, the corn maze of customer service is the most consistent post-purchase interaction they have with a brand, so to receive this kind of negative reaction is pretty discouraging,” said Ken Tuchman, CEO and chairman of TeleTech. “We hope these findings sound a loud alarm, waking companies to the fact that their daily consumer interactions are creating a frustrating customer experience that will hurt their business.”

Just 28 percent of respondents said they preferred automated responses over in-person customer service; even unhelpful customer service if the employee is friendly. Nearly two-thirds said their opinions about a product were most swayed by world-of-mouth references, not company branding efforts. And over half of respondents said a good customer experience was very important to their decision to continue doing business with a company. The results suggest improved customer service is the most beneficial way to repair damaged corporate images.