Research reveals customers want proper service by businesses
15th February 2016 · 0 Comments
By Della Hasselle
Contributing Writer
A new survey shows that it might just take one bad phone call for businesses to send customers away permanently.
More than half of customers throughout America are unwilling to buy merchandise from a company again if their first phone call is handled unsatisfactorily, according to research from the audio branding company PH Media Group.
The survey of 2,234 Americans discovered that of the country’s regions, the American South was most tolerant. Still, even here, 57 percent of customers are unwilling to tolerate poor call handling from businesses, the company’s researchers found.
In the Midwest, 59 percent of customers surveyed said they wouldn’t return to a business that disappointed them with a first phone call. Those in the Northeast and West were both discovered to be the least tolerant, with 61 percent of customers vowing to never return.
Several facets of those first interactions were scrutinized, including the way calls are answered and the phone manner of customer service advisors. It also concerned sounds heard while on hold, including voice and music, according to Mark Williamson, sales and marketing director at PH Media Group.
“The results show that first impressions are absolutely crucial and the fact customers will base their decision on whether to do business with a company on the first phone call should be a clear warning to businesses in the South,” Williamson said. “Given that the telephone is a crucial tool in converting leads to sales, a lasting negative impression formed on the back of a poor-quality call can have a detrimental effect on business profitability.”
The research discovered America’s older generation are particularly intolerant. Sixty-three percent of 55- to 64-year-olds claim they would not provide repeat business to companies who were not satisfied with the way businesses answered their first calls.
In younger customers, aged 18 to 24, that figure dropped to 54 percent.
“Even demographics where tolerance is higher, more than half of respondents refuse to do repeat business with a company who didn’t handle their first phone call to expectations,” Williamson said.
Williamson said that “best practice” in call handling must apply to “all facets of the experience” in order to be effective.
In the report, PH Media recommended telephone training for employees, as well as “effective audio branding” for companies.
Audio branding services include out-of-hours messaging and auto attendant voicing for businesses to play targeted marketing messages whenever telephone callers are put on hold or transferred.
The latter may be more beneficial. Although many businesses already have automated phone answering services, the PH Media study comes on the heels of another report that predicts more robots will soon replace humans for such clerical jobs.
By the year 2020, humans are expected to lose a net of 5.1 million jobs to robots and artificial intelligence, according to the recent report from the World Economic Forum.
That report surveyed 15 economies that make up 65 percent of the total global workforce, and pointed out that robots have already begun taking over manual labor and jobs, such as cashiers.
The report shows jobs in every industry would be displaced, and the most at-risk jobs include data processing and administrative jobs. Up to two-thirds of anticipated losses will probably be in the office and administrative sectors.
“As entire industries adjust, most occupations are undergoing a fundamental transformation,” according to the report. “While some jobs are threatened by redundancy and others grow rapidly, existing jobs are also going through a change in the skill sets required to do them.”
The PH Media Group study could be important for businesses, as studies show that on average repeat customers bring in more money than new ones.
This article originally published in the February 15, 2016 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
