How has the pandemic affected customer experience?

2020-21 Edition

[There is a more recent version of this report here]

This is perhaps the most burning question that this year’s UK Customer Experience Decision-Makers’ Guide by Contact Babel aims to answer. The leading analyst for the contact centre industry talked to more than 200 UK organisations and 1,000 UK consumers about the priorities and performance of their CX programmes, their technology use, investment plans and strategy. What did they find?

Key findings of the report

• More B2B organisations now see themselves competing on price, possibly driven by the pressures placed on them by the pandemic crisis.
• A key aim of customer experience improvement is improving customer retention rates, although cost management is seen as being vital component as well.
• Channels aren’t being replaced but rather augmented, forcing businesses to develop an omnichannel approach.
• Live telephony is still by far the largest communication channel used by customers, comprising 67% of inbound interactions. Email is second with 20%, and web chat accounts for around 4%.
• Technology is the main roadblock to CX: many businesses reported a lack of a single view of customers across channels, and that they were being held back by the restrictions of legacy technology.
• First-contact resolution is the primary driver of positive customer experience.

Read the full report to find out more...