2016 Customer Service by the Numbers – A Year in Customer Service Statistics

From a customer service standpoint, we’ve established that 2016 was the year of the chatbot but that’s not the whole story. Omni-channel customer service, cloud contact centers, and personalization are all customer experience themes that grew in 2016 and will only continue to get stronger in 2017. Of course, agent engagement is also top of mind for contact center managers going into 2017 as the agent experience directly impacts the customer experience. Take a look at these numbers from 2016 to see if your contact center is keeping pace with technology innovation.

Personalized, omni-channel experiences are not optional for the contact center

• 58% of businesses use at least eight channels to interact with buyers – CEM Executive’s Agenda 2016: Aligning the Business Around the Customer, Aberdeen, 2016
• Best-in-Class firms are 30% more likely than All Others to have integrated data silos to produce an integrated view of the buyer’s journey – Customer Intelligence: Using Data To Drive Loyalty And Advocacy, Aberdeen, 2016
• 68% of 18 – 34-year-old consumers have higher expectations for customer service today than they had just one year ago – Microsoft–2016 State of Global Customer Service Report
• 68% of 18 – 34-year-old consumers have stopped doing business with a brand due to a single poor customer service experience – Microsoft–2016 State of Global Customer Service Report
• Best-in-Class firms are 62% more likely to regularly evaluate the effectiveness of each channel used in customer conversations – Customer Intelligence: Using Data To Drive Loyalty And Advocacy, Aberdeen, 2016
• Digital volumes are on the rise. Last year alone, phone transactions handled by contact centers fell another 12%, but traffic increases were recorded across almost every digital channel – Dimension Data’s 2016 Global Contact Centre Benchmarking Report, © Dimension Data 2013-2016
• 65% of US online adults said they used instant messaging /online with a live person, and 43% contacted a company using Twitter – Forrester – Trends 2016: The Future of Customer Service
• 52% of consumers are extremely or somewhat likely to switch brands if a company doesn’t make an effort to personalize their communications to them – State of the Connected Consumer, Salesforce, 2016
• 66% of consumers say they’re extremely or somewhat likely to switch brands if they feel like they’re treated like a number rather than an individual – State of the Connected Consumer, Salesforce, 2016

The consumer desire for self-service is fueling the chatbot craze

• 65% of consumers feel good when they resolve a customer service issue without a live person – 2016 Aspect Consumer Experience Index
• 70% of respondents prefer to use chatbots to interact with companies for simple to moderate interactions and transactions – 2016 Aspect Consumer Experience Index
• 69% say they use a chatbot or automated assistant at least once a month – 2016 Aspect Consumer Experience Index
• 77% say tech has significantly changed their company’s expectations of how companies should interact with them – State of the Connected Consumer, Salesforce, 2016

Workforce Optimization tools help improve the agent experience and ultimately the customer experience

• 74% of contact center managers say a better software user experience for agents can improve the customer experience – 2016 The Aspect Agent Experience Study 
  Three in four say mobility is needed for agents to improve performance – 2016 The Aspect Agent Experience Study 
• Better software equals better agent engagement: 74% of contact center managers believe it improves agent morale – 2016 The Aspect Agent Experience Study 
• 87% of contact center managers say agents would be more satisfied if they could use software that had the look and feel of the consumer technologies they use outside of work – 2016 The Aspect Agent Experience Study 
• Mobile access to contact center solutions is key: 70% of executive officers think that access to contact center software from mobile devices is important for improving agent effectiveness – 2016 The Aspect Agent Experience Study 
• Happy agents equal happy customers: 82% of contact center professionals who say their agents are satisfied or very satisfied also report putting a strong emphasis on maintaining and building strong customer satisfaction and loyalty – 2016 The Aspect Agent Experience Study 
• Businesses using workflow management enjoy 83% greater annual improvement in customer satisfaction rates – Managing The Omni-Channel Customer Journey: The Role Of Workflows, Aberdeen, July 2016
• Data shows that companies with workflow management enjoy 90% greater annual improvement in first contact resolution, compared to All Others – Managing The Omni-Channel Customer Journey: The Role Of Workflows, Aberdeen, July 2016
• Ignoring employee productivity when managing customer intelligence programs costs businesses an average of $1.1 million each year in unnecessary costs – – Customer Intelligence: Using Data To Drive Loyalty And Advocacy, Aberdeen, 2016

If your contact center needs help with any of these areas, it is not too late to catch up with the technology leaders. Learn how an integrated cloud customer engagement center can help