The stakes have got higher. Our survey shows 96% of customers will take an action that hurts your profits as a result of a single bad experience. They expect speed, responsiveness and access via a variety of (innovative) channels.
How do you react after a bad customer experience?
- 70
- 60
- 50
- 40
- 30
- 20
- 10
- 0
- Not purchase with the company/move to another company
- Write a complaint to the company via email or letter
- Phone the company to complain
- Speak to family/ friends face to face
- Write a review on a third party website/ forum
- Complain to the company on their social media account
- Speak to family/ friends via other communication format e.g. text, phone call, email
- Post something to your social media account about a company
- I do nothing
It doesn’t matter whether you engage customers digitally or physically; whether they’re old or young. Customer experience expectations have risen across the board – and the price for getting it wrong is also universally high.
Targeting Millennials? They’re more likely to be heavy internet users, true. But nearly half of them told us that “regardless of developments in technology, I would always choose to speak to a human.”
What about brands targeting older customers? Two-thirds of them want to be in touch with another person when they need help. But 65% would be happy to use technology rather than humans when getting a quote for a new product, for example.
The generation gap?
Shared assumptions
Value trustworthiness
Value a quick response
Value an informative response
The big differences
Mobile as main gateway
Regardless of tech, chooses human if possible
Using VR to visualise products
The need for speed
Customers want to interact with brands when, where and how they choose. Speed, trustworthiness and clarity is equally valued among all consumers. The survey of over 7,000 consumers in seven countries does suggest some differences in channel preferences between generations – but not to the extent that any of them can be ignored by any business.
That means having systems that facilitate faster, more decisive interactions with human operators. It’s about deploying automation that augments an innate and precisely analysed understanding of customers want.
Keep it simple
(even if it's complicated)
This isn’t a call for complexity. Customers want simplicity.
In our survey, 73% agreed that “I would rather have a few solutions for contacting a company rather than lots which don’t work properly.” While older customers typically see talking to a human as a bit more important, and younger customers have a mild preference for convenience, there is no gulf in their broad perceptions. Good customer experience (CX) has to address the broad spread of expectations across channels.
