[24]7 has unveiled some leading research that sheds light on the new expectations that consumers bring to the enterprise.  With the accelerating adoption of smartphones, today’s consumers engage in stops and starts across multiple channels and devices. These new parameters of engagement have changed consumer expectations as they now demand contextual customer service delivered on “their terms.” The survey reveals that there is a disconnect between the enterprise and the expectations of connected customers as it relates to context, time and effort.

Consumer frustration – context be thy name

The key findings from the survey revealed high levels of frustration with companies’ lack of context about the customer’s situation. From the consumers surveyed, 83 percent were smartphone owners, and they indicated that they faced the following issues with context:

• Four out of five say that companies do not have the context of their last conversation, forcing them to start over;
• 78 percent say that customer service departments take too long to resolve an issue;
• 72 percent said it takes too much effort to handle their situation;
• 71 percent cannot easily cross channels (e.g., from the web to the phone) and have to repeat their situation;
• 71 percent say that customer service is impersonal, does not know who they are, and does not know their issue.

Top sources of frustration of smartphone owners across all ages

Studies like this produce much needed insight when it comes to customer experience. The bottom line here is that poor customer experience caused by the lack of context is going to be a wakeup call to companies. The takeaway here is that companies will need to start adapting to this new world order of engagement, or else they will start to experience high customer churn and ultimately lose business.

“Poor customer experience caused by the lack of context is a wakeup call to companies. Today’s consumers engage in stops and starts across channels and devices at will. According to a Google Research Study1, 90 percent of consumers cross devices in pursuit of a single goal and 98 percent move between devices in the same day,” said P.V. Kannan, co-founder and CEO of [24]7. “Unless companies adapt to ‘the new world order of engagement’, they will see high customer churn. Companies must invest in technology that enables the customer’s context to be available on the web, mobile, chat, social, and the phone and on whatever device that the customer chooses to use.”

Consumers also seem to want issues to be resolved faster and with less effort. One statistics says that 78 percent of smartphone owners said that customer service departments take too long to resolve an issue, and in another statistic, 72 percent said it takes too much effort to solve their situation. Clearly, Frustrations are coming from service inabilities that miss effectively engaging with their lives.  Companies seem to missing on that point and should be focusing the key metric of actual customer efforts.

“As the survey shows, consumers are increasingly frustrated with a company’s inability to offer service in the way that they engage in their lives. Customer effort is a key metric that companies need to get their arms around,” Kannan continued. “To reduce customer effort, companies must offer predictive analytics in omnichannel – the new customer experience that anticipates what customers want and maintains their context across channels. If companies can provide service on the customer’s terms, they will be rewarded with increased satisfaction, loyalty and ultimately with sales.”

Enterprises can get ahead of these expectations and win in the customer experience arena by paying attention the overall consumer experience and by embracing the technology that makes that happen. For the full survey results and charts, please visit: http://info.247-inc.com/PRSurvey1Details_PRSurvey1Details-LP.html

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