Internet service company Transveral did its annual customer service analysis of 100 of the top website and discovered that almost 70% could answer less than 40% of the 10 questions most asked by customers. Only a dismal 16 percent could answer 6 out of 10 questions, which involved everyday issues like refund policies, not difficult unrelated problems.
The report says that consumers are forced to search through a growing number of pages to get answers and when that usually fails, to call or email call centers that are stretched beyond capacity.
According to Transversal, the average wait for a response to an email was 33 hours, and even when the email was received the answer wasn't related to the question asked.
While retailers, because of their focus on physical goods, were the best in the survey, still fashion, grocery and CD/book sites only could come up with answers to half of the questions asked.
The report added that only 10% of those surveyed had dedicated customer search facilities which forced the customers to use their own time and effort to find the answers.
Of the industries in the U.K. surveyed, the travel and insurance sites were only able to respond to one out of the ten questions asked, even though they had invested strongly in their online channels.
Davin Yap, chief executive at Transversal said that "Our research shows that finding information online is like looking for a needle in a haystack, demonstrating a shameful disregard for customer service."
When I first read this, I found the statistics hard to believe. As I read it seems that possibly the Web industry has caught U.K. companies off guard and they haven't properly trained their employees or hired enough to handle the load.
It also seems that they aren't doing a good job of helping consumers navigate simple answers to questions on the sites. How hard could it be to state easy and simply refund policies and questions like that? Evidently, they have things way too complicated which is one thing Thealphamarketer.com always urges its readers to make sure is done right.
Companies in the U.K. or competing for business there have a great opportunity to grab the lead through great customer service here.
Have you found doing business in the U.K. to be difficult and hard to navigate the Web site and get answers to your questions?
Comment Preview