Dive Brief:
- Customers are more satisfied with their contact center interactions than they were last year, according to research released last week by Qualtrics XM Institute in collaboration with AWS. Most consumers — two-thirds — found contact center agents both knowledgeable and helpful, according to the survey of more than 23,000 consumers and 3,072 employees.
- But customers are more likely than ever to walk away when those interactions go south. Over half — 53% — of bad experiences result in customers spending less with a brand, according to Qualtrics.
- Call centers with lower wait times generate higher rates of loyalty. Customers who are satisfied with wait times are 3 times more likely to recommend a brand and 2.6 times more likely to trust and purchase from a brand more
Dive Insight:
In 2025, contact centers will have to figure out the appropriate balance of self-service and human agents to demonstrate value to the business.
The latter is a reputation problem, according to Isabelle Zdatny, head of thought leadership at Qualtrics XM Institute.
“Contact centers are perceived as cost centers for the organization,” Zdatny said. “When it comes to proving business value, a great way for agents to show it is by connecting their results to higher outcomes like customer loyalty.”
Low wait times and first call resolution can win businesses loyalty. Customers who have their issue resolved on first call are roughly twice as likely to trust, recommend and purchase more from a brand, Qualtrics found.
While businesses may be tempted to cut agents in favor of self-service, Qualtrics found that one of customers’ top concerns was not being able to talk to a human, with half of customers concerned AI will replace a human to connect to.
This is where meeting customer preferences is key, according to Jason Maynard, CTO for AMER and APAC at Zendesk. While younger generations may be more interested in self-service, there will always be those who prefer speaking with a human and sensitive issues that may require speaking to a representative.
Self-service channels should have an option to connect to an agent, Maynard said. “We've all had the experiences where all you want to do is connect to somebody because an automation is just getting in the way.”
