Mobile Emerging As An Active Customer Support Channel

January 17, 2014

WBRDigital-Mobile-Customer-Support-Channel-Jan2014Mobile and social media are emerging as more influential customer support and experience channels, according to [download page] the results of a survey conducted by WBR Digital. Two-thirds of customer experience professionals responding to the survey said they already have (33%) or are planning to develop (35%) mobile into an active support channel this year. And 6 in 10 said that social media has become a greater priority over the past year in addressing customer needs and building customer experience.

Overall, 2 in 3 respondents indicate that they have a multi-channel customer strategy in place. The primary KPI for customer experience efforts remains satisfaction-based, although loyalty-based measures are also prominent.

Newer customer experience channels require resources and strategy, but these are key obstacles to effective implementation of strategies. Indeed, 6 in 10 respondents chose either internal resources (20%), lack of strategy (19%) or budgets (19%) as their greatest obstacle to implementing a customer experience strategy. 7 in 10 say that it’s at least slightly difficult to get internal approval for resources and funding for a new customer experience initiative, a figure that makes more sense considering that only 55% of respondents claimed to have seen measured success for a customer experience initiative.

Other Findings:

  • 55% of respondents come from organizations which have a separate customer experience department.
  • 48% best describe their approach to online customer comments as “listening and responding to direct inquiries,” while 31% are “proactively searching and responding to customer comments.”
  • The areas in which respondents most commonly partner with solution providers to help with customer experience initiatives are: customer analytics/feedback (55%); market research (51%); and web experience design (42%).

About the Data: The “2014 Customer Experience Benchmarking Study” was fielded in December 2013 and received responses from more than 130 qualified individuals. Most have been in their current role for at least 3 years.

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