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A new study from IDC and LogMeIn has revealed that fast and effective support will be a competitive differentiator for companies looking to win-over digitally transformed customers and employees.

According to the study “Support Services as a Competitive Differentiator”, nearly 67% of consumers said that customer satisfaction was more important than price when doing business with a company, yet nearly 30% of companies still say that reducing the cost of support is more important than customer satisfaction.  With the rules of customer and employee engagement changing, this disconnect is setting companies up for a negative long-term impact.

Increasing Customer Expectations

Today’s connected world demands that support and service teams take a greater role in driving customer engagement and loyalty.  Digitalization, including the adoption of mainstream social platforms and the use of online forums, is acting as an accelerator on this shift.  This is turning customer support improvement into an urgent imperative and making business practices increasingly transparent.

According to the study, customers rank better communication and fast problem resolution among their top priorities for customer support.  While an overwhelming 89% of respondents believe that having a support agent they can communicate with is the most important aspect of a support experience, companies are challenged to meet this goal due to the various nuances of each user and individual devices.  In fact, almost one-third of respondents said that support took a long time to resolve their issue while 24% said the problem was never resolved.  With 64%, of consumers reporting that good support experience result in advocacy and additional purchases from the company and 60% reporting that they share bad experiences as well, residual impacts of customer support satisfaction have impacts far beyond a single engagement.

“Today’s digital disruption signals the need for a fresh support strategy.  Service teams are being called upon to fulfil a greater purpose and are in a prime position to create success stories that can lead to better brand awareness, improve sales conversions, and ultimately, repeat business,” said Jennifer Cooke, Research Director, IDC.  “As the research shows, the degree to which support is effective is now a competitive differentiator and companies need to approach it in a more proactive and predictive way or risk damaging relationships with customers, employees and partners.”

Expectations for Internal IT Are Also on the Rise

Negative support experience has a widespread impact on a company beyond just lost customers and revenue.  Internal IT teams are under similar pressures from their end-users.   In nearly all the topics surveyed, employee experiences and expectations of their internal IT teams matched those consumers have of customer support underscoring the importance of efficient support across the board.  In addition, faulty internal IT support is costing companies in productivity of employees.  When users don't receive effective support, 52% said that they waste time because they can't perform their jobs. In addition to not doing their jobs, 45% of the time they pull another colleague away from their own jobs and ask for help. The net impact is a dramatic decrease in productivity.

Developing an Effective Support Strategy

Companies are facing a variety of hurdles when it comes to developing a modern and effective support strategy.  These challenges range from decreasing or stagnant budgets for support tools (41%) and lack of executive support (20%) to inability to scale with current tools and technologies (42%). Even for those that have made some changes to their internal processes or invested in technologies (50% of respondents), only 25% have been able to drive strong relationships due to the lack of adaptability and intelligence capabilities.

The survey did find that technologies like remote support are helping alleviate some of the pain customers associate with support today.  Nearly 75% of organisations reported using remote support solutions within their environment and 85% of end users saying these technologies helped resolve their issues more quickly than other methods of support.  As companies look to continue to mature their support organisations, they will need to look adopt these technologies as well as ones that will enable emerging artificial intelligence and automation to help meet the needs of changing users, devices and geographic locations.

“Customer service inextricably linked with the overall success of a company,” said Dave Campbell, Vice President, Customer Engagement and Support at LogMeIn.  “This becomes even more apparent when discussing customer support specifically.  In today’s competitive landscape, support organisations are being viewed two ways – as a competitive advantage or a detriment to success.  As a result, finding the right balance of people, process and technology will be key for companies to mature their support strategy to a point where it will create long term loyalty, customer advocacy, and business growth.”

Methodology

In August 2017, IDC conducted two surveys to better understand how existing support technologies were meeting the needs of a changing user base. One survey focused on the end-user experience, and the other survey examined enterprise and service provider support programs and the tools they used, with the goal of assessing the current state of support, identifying areas of success, and uncovering areas that needed improvement. The 1,400 survey respondents were from a broad mix of industries, company sizes, professional roles, and geographic regions.

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A new study by LogMeIn and Ovum reveals a significant disconnect between what today’s mobile, always-connected customers have come to expect from customer service and what contact centres are delivering.

Although businesses are fully aware of new behavioural trends among customers, not all of them are tailoring their customer service experience to match customers’ needs. Over 50% of customers surveyed believe that the ability to reach the right representative has worsened over the last two years. As a result, 84% claimed to have stopped doing business with a brand following a bad customer service experience.

The key findings also show that mobile, web self-service and chat are rapidly growing channels for customer support. Over the last two years, the number of customers using a mobile phone for support calls doubled to 40%, the use of mobile apps has more than tripled to 16% up from 5%, and the number of customers using live chat has almost tripled to 29%. Both customers and businesses look at Internet of Things as the next asset to support technical queries and ensure smooth customer experience, with 34% of surveyed businesses claiming they have IoT-ready devices.

Conducted by Ovum Research, a leading global technology research and advisory firm, on behalf of LogMeIn, makers of the popular customer engagement tools, BoldChat and LogMeIn Rescue, the survey explores the connected-consumer’s expectations for customer service and how those expectations compare with what contact centre managers believe and are prepared to face.

Other key findings include:

• Time taken to reach an agent is the biggest customer complaint:
65% of customers want easier access to representatives as they are most frustrated with time taken to reach a representative and resolution time. Long hold times and automated service menus continue to irritate customers who are keen to get fast resolutions to their problems. This explains why many are turning to the web for support inquiries, with contact centres seeing almost 45% of interactions coming from channels other than voice.
• Customer service relationships directly impact loyalty:
84% of customers claimed to have stopped doing business with a brand following a bad experience. Businesses need to pinpoint the cause of customer dissatisfaction and make changes to improve retention and protect their customer base.
• Customers look to web and mobile for answers first:
71% of customers said they use the web to look for information always or most of the time before contacting customer service. However, only 31% of managers believe that their customers frequently use the web before calling, showing a big discrepancy. Managers need new tools to track web behaviour and link it to live customer interactions.
• Use of email and web chat continues to grow:
The number of customers using live chat and email has almost tripled over the last two years. As this number increases further, contact centres must be ready to handle interactions in non-voice channels, but also to provide quick resolution, as resolution rates are lower for support inquiries across non-voice channels.
• Live chat is a promising channel for support interactions:
Not only does it offer fast access to agents, but it is efficient because agents can handle two or three chats at the same time. It can also be used on mobile devices, using links from a mobile application or site, and agents can link customer web behaviour to a chat interaction so agents are more readily aware of particular behaviours.
• Managers understand that waiting times are an issue:
Managers do realise that customers need quick resolutions to their problems, as their top priorities for 2015 are agent training and improving resolution times. They track resolution times and customer satisfaction among other metrics in order to improve connectivity between agents and customers, whether through new or traditional channels.
• The Internet of Things shows potential for technical resolutions:
 The Internet of Things is not completely understood by customers, as 50% of customers said that they didn’t believe it to be necessary or would be uncomfortable with connecting their devices. But 25% would be willing to use it if it means solving technical issues quicker. Contact centre managers, however, are familiar with the benefits of connected devices and are keen to resolve issues remotely, as 34% of the surveyed said that they have devices that can be connected to the Internet and out of those respondents 88% currently offer connected versions of those products.[/unordered_list] 

"This dual perspective study confirms that customers are increasingly using digital channels for support, especially if they know they can get faster resolutions and responses. It also indicates that businesses need to adapt their service tools to match customer needs and improve access to live agents,” said Aphrodite Brinsmead, Senior Analyst at Ovum. "Contact centres should invest in technology to understand cross-channel behaviour and link customers’ digital interactions with their profiles and case records. By optimising online support and guiding customers to the right channel for their issues, businesses will be able to improve resolution rates and customer satisfaction.”

“Today’s highly mobile customers are empowered to seek out support from multiple touch points and have come to expect a response through those channels in minutes, let alone hours. Yet contact centres are not equipped to provide the fast resolutions their customer’s desire. This research provides an insightful view into the needs and frustrations of these mobile customers, giving contact centre managers the opportunity to invest in the correct tools and prioritise their support channels,” said W. Sean Ford, CMO of LogMeIn. “We believe that live chat benefits all parts of the business, particularly when added to websites or mobile applications and therefore should be a priority for contact centre managers.”

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