Some facts about customer service channel preferences.
This is a time of unprecedented choices for consumers - Girl Scout cookies now come in 12 flavors, including two gluten-free options; there are over 200 Yankee Candle scents; and American Girl has introduced a little over 45 unique dolls over the years. Never mind all the options of cat food and cleaning products on grocery store shelves!
Consumers have been conditioned to expect businesses to offer them choices, and those expectations extend to how they interact with businesses when they seek support. Our benchmark consumer research found that 90% of consumers are more likely to consider doing business with a company that offers multiple ways to communicate. They want options, and with that come customer service channel preferences. Some consumers prefer self-service, while others want an agent to help them. Some love online chat, while others still like a good ol’ phone call. Self-service or agent-assisted, digital or traditional, there are options to satisfy most customer service channel preferences.
But short of implementing every possible support channel, organizations typically have to prioritize which channels they can offer, which means they can't fulfill 100% of all their customers' top customer service channel preferences. This makes it important for businesses to make informed, data-driven decisions about which channels to support.
While every business needs to cater to the unique characteristics of their specific customers, here is some information that represents a broad, cross-section of consumers. We surveyed over 2400 consumers and this is what we found out about their customer service channel preferences:
