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Twitter and Facebook worst channels for retail customer experience, finds research by EpticaStudy shows fashion and food retailers focus customer service efforts on the web Reading, UK, 22 May 2019 – Retailers are neglecting social media when it comes to customer service, and are not listening to consumers to drive customer experience improvements, according to the 2019 Eptica Digital Trust Study. The Study found that while retailers successfully answered 59% of routine queries asked via web self service, chat, email, Facebook and Twitter, there were wide variations in performance between channels. Retailers provided answers to 83% of queries on their websites but only responded correctly to 38% of tweets and 50% of Facebook messages. Performance had worsened on many channels since 2017 – then retailers answered 73% of emails. By 2019 this had dropped to 68%, despite the continued popularity of the channel with consumers, who use it for over a quarter of their interactions with brands. As part of the 2019 Eptica Digital Trust Study, 20 fashion and food & drink retailers were evaluated on their digital customer experience, alongside brands from other sectors, by testing their accuracy and speed at answering relevant, routine queries, repeating research conducted since 2012. Questions included asking about ethical sourcing policies (fashion) and allergy labelling (food and drink). Additionally, 1,000 consumers were asked for their views on customer experience. Fashion (answering 60% of all queries) and food and drink (59%) were the top sectors surveyed but still failed to respond to 4 in 10 of all routine queries. The research also demonstrated a direct link between trust, listening and loyalty. 89% of consumers surveyed said they either will stop buying from brands that they don’t trust or will spend less. Building trust begins with delivering on basic promises – 59% ranked giving satisfactory, consistent answers as a top three factor in creating trustworthiness, while 63% rated making processes easy and seamless as key. Just 8% of consumers felt that brands were listening to them all of the time, with 74% believing brands pay attention to their views half the time or less. “The move to digital has transformed the retail landscape,” said Olivier Njamfa, CEO and Co-Founder, Eptica. “Greater choice means consumers are becoming more demanding and are actively seeking out brands that they can trust and who listen to them. While retail brands have made some improvements since 2017, they have slipped back in others, damaging trust and ultimately customer loyalty and revenues. If they want to succeed they need to listen to customers and use their insight. Only those who do this will thrive and stay ahead of the competition.” Speed of response also varied widely between channels – and even within sectors and brands. One fashion retailer answered a tweet in 17 minutes, yet another took 50 hours to reply. A food and drink retailer responded on Facebook within one minute but needed nearly 23 hours to provide an answer on email. Overall response times on chat doubled from 4 minutes back in 2017 to 8 minutes this year. Facebook had the fastest average speed of response, at 43 minutes, 24 seconds – over twice as fast as Twitter (1 hour 56 minutes) and nearly 15 times faster than email (10 hours 19 minutes). This is despite exactly the same questions being asked across these channels. The study evaluated 50 UK brands, split equally between the fashion, food and drink, travel, insurance and banking sectors. Brands were rated on their ability to answer five routine questions via their websites, as well as their speed, accuracy and consistency when responding to email, Twitter, Facebook and chat. Additionally, 1,000 UK consumers were surveyed on their attitude to trust, its relationship with customer experience and on loyalty and brand reputation. All research was completed in H1 2019. A full report, including the study results, graphics and best practice recommendations for brands to transform customer experience is available at https://www.eptica.com/19cxretail. An infographic on the results is available at https://www.eptica.com/state-uk-retail-customer-experience-infographic-2019. -ends- About Eptica Eptica is a leading European technology company specialising in intelligent platforms for digital customer experience. Eptica provides conversational and collaborative solutions powered by AI. Founded 18 years ago by Olivier Njamfa, Eptica supports brands to make digital CX the key link in the value chain, ensuring their customer service delivers value to consumers and across their business. Globally, more than 450 organisations across all industries rely on our solutions on all digital channels, including Self Service & knowledge base, email, chat and social media. We enable millions of individuals to engage in meaningful conversations with brands improving daily lives for everyone. Customers include AXA, L’Occitane Group, Dixons Carphone, Crédit Agricole, Co-operative Energy, Domestic & General, Ageas Insurance Solutions, Hastings Direct, TUI, Debenhams, Capita, RSPCA and Birmingham City Council. Specialising in Natural Language Processing (NLP), Eptica makes the best use of AI and cognitive technologies for CX, enabling brands to improve: 1. Customer Satisfaction, loyalty, and sales 2. Competitiveness: equipping organisations with bots that automate simple tasks and provide decision support tools to enhance agents, generating greater productivity and allowing agents to focus on more complex conversations and enabling sales 3. Customer Intelligence: turning VoC data into actionable insight and sharing it throughout the company to continuously improve the customer experience and to guide brands and their operations. Eptica has offices in Paris, London, Boston and Singapore. Follow us on Twitter: @Eptica. Discover our news and opinions on the market in our blog. For further information, please contact: Measures Consulting Chris Measures +44 (0) 7976 535147/[email protected] As a community-building service, TMCnet allows user submitted content which is not always proofed by TMCnet editors. If you feel this entry is of inferior quality or wish to report it for some reason, please forward the URL to "webedit [AT] tmcnet [DOT] com" with your comments. |