In today's fast-paced society, customers want to get answers as quick as possible. However, a new study shows that a majority of companies offering email support services fail to meet their customers' expectation for fast response rates.
According to The Telegraph, a survey by customer service firm Kana Software of Call Centre Association (KANA) members showed that 59% of companies take eight hours or more to respond to email communications.
Unfortunately, the rest of the companies included in the survey yielded response rates unacceptable in customer service: 26.5% take 24 hours or more to answer customer queries via email.
KANA added that, while companies assume that consumers are shifting interactions to the social media landscape, a significant number of customers still use email as a customer service channel.
Email usage for customer service
Even with new digital age channels for customer service, email is still regularly used by customers. This is supported by numerous studies.
A previous KANA study shows that 42% of customers use email for complaints, followed by 36% who favor phone. Similarly, E-Consultancy reports that a survey of UK customers shows that email support is preferred by 44% of respondents.
Social Media Today also lists email as second to its list of top five sources of assistance customers want to see in a website.
These studies show that email is still widely used by customers and will probably remain as a standard channel in the future. As such, companies need to pay more attention on how they handle email correspondence and ramp up their services by improving their average response rates, as well as other key metrics. These can be done by expanding the number of customer service specialists handling email support, or they can even deploy it to a reliable outsourcing partner.
Open Access BPO offers outsourced customer support solutions via phone, email, and live chat. Learn more about our services on our official website or connect with us via Google+ .
