Aspect Software’s 5th Annual Contact Center Consumer Index Reveals that Above All, Customers Want Effective Experiences

5 Key Findings to help you understand today’s consumers – providing valuable insight as you build lifetime loyalty with your customers

WESTFORD, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--As part of Aspect’s ongoing desire to report on current customer experience sentiment across a variety of customer service and contact center interactions, Aspect Software, in partnership with Farrell Insight, conducted a national study of 1,100 Americans 18–74 years of age. The macro objective of this specific study is to investigate the differing and similar attitudes, preferences and behaviors various generations and consumer types have regarding customer touchpoints and engagement.

KEY FINDINGS

Customers Want EFFECTIVE Experiences

Above all, when customers need to interact with customer service, they want to get it done right. Making sure the issue is resolved correctly stands out above speed, convenience and even personalization. Coming in second and third were accuracy and security. The biggest shift year over year is channel choice, falling to the bottom of the rankings and much to our surprise, this was 100% consistent across all generations.

“While every experience is unique and all our customers oftentimes are aiming to achieve different outcomes, we thought it was time to take the guess work out of the equation and invested in a MaxDiff Analysis to determine once and for all — what do customers really want?” said Colleen Sheley, Aspect VP of Marketing

Providing Great Service INCREASES Revenue

Six out of ten consumers have reported doing more business with companies because of good customer service in the past year.

Customers Want RELEVANT Outbound Communications

Most customers want organizations they do business with to contact them if they are required to take some form of action. A majority of customers also want to be contacted about information that may affect or benefit them, but most customers do not want to be contacted for marketing purposes. In fact, 84% would like to be contacted if their data has been compromised, versus 32% for corporate or organizational news.

Self-Service Works for SIMPLE Tasks

Across the board, 72% of respondents prefer to connect with a live agent when interacting with customer service for any task. For simple tasks, the percentage moves to 58% choosing a live agent. While customers overwhelmingly prefer to interact with a live agent, there is opportunity for organizations to provide effective self-service for simple tasks to improve customer loyalty.

Customers Prefer HAPPY Agents

Happy agents elevate good experiences to great. No matter how fast and effective your service is, a happy agent has the ability to add a positive emotional experience to a service experience.

“The key findings of this report are from the point of view of the consumer. As a technologist, I am always hoping for faster innovation and change. As a consumer myself, I completely understand why voice remains king and live agents must be available when consumers need to talk to a real person, not a machine,” said Patrick Dennis, Aspect President and CEO.

Hear more from Patrick Dennis about our 2020 report findings in his keynote, Lifetime Loyalty By The Numbers at the Aspect Customer Experience Event, ACE, ACTION! 2020.

For the full findings of the 5^th Annual Aspect Consumer Experience Index download the report HERE

About Aspect

Aspect is on a mission to simplify and improve customer engagement. Our enterprise software is used by millions of agents every year and supports billions of consumer interactions around the world. Our best-of-breed contact center and workforce optimization applications help companies keep agents engaged while providing exceptional customer service experiences. Our flexible, highly scalable solutions for self-service and live interaction management and workforce optimization are available on-premises or in any hosted, private or public cloud environment.

For more information, visit www.aspect.com. Follow Aspect on Twitter at @AspectSoftware. Read our blogs at http://blogs.aspect.com