European Contact Centers Still Stink

Aspect Software's (News - Alert) first "Contact Center Satisfaction Index Europe" survey, conducted by the Leo J. Shapiro and Associates market research firm, has measured consumer satisfaction in phone and internet interactions in six countries, with consumers giving the contact center industry in Europe a grade of 67 percent.

The countries surveyed were the U.K., the Netherlands, France, Germany, Italy and Spain. A variety of industries were represented.

Aspect found that Europeans tend to like e-mail better than North Americans for customer service transactions, and, oddly, "favor efficiency much more than North Americans."

Among the tested criteria, empathy and advocacy was the "most important" quality in customer interactions to both European and North American consumers. This quality refers to the human interaction element (patience, knowledge, professionalism and friendliness) of the customer-business relationship.

Whether you're surprised or not by this next finding probably has to do if youyou're your understanding of Europe from firsthand experience or watching Shadowlands and reading Heidi, but European customers reported that contact center efficiency was almost as important as agent advocacy and empathy -- as many as 85 percent of customers deemed these features as extremely important. In North America, only 59 percent of customers found any of the efficiency features to be extremely important, a distant second to empathy and advocacy features.

And in another utterly unshocking finding, more than 20 percent of customers in Europe and North America reported that their last contact center interaction fell short of expectations, yet a small minority of contact centers feel that they fall short of meeting customer expectations -- only two percent of contact center managers in Europe and only 10 percent of North American contact centers acknowledge these shortcomings.

The phone still dominates customer interactions: The last customer interaction undertaken by 66 percent of European consumers was by phone, while 33 percent used e-mail, and two percent used web chat.

In four percent of the European consumer interactions studied, respondents swung from "happy customer" before the contact to "about to change supplier" after the contact --providing evidence that contact center interaction can be critical to a business.

Thirty-five percent of interactions with communications companies fell short of European consumer expectations compared to only 17 percent of retail company interactions and 16 percent of financial company interactions.

And in probably the most damning finding, fully 81 percent of consumers thought that "minimizing waiting time" was important, while only 70 percent of contact centers thought the same.

And you wondered why noted European Dante Aligheri has contact center operators in the Malbowges of Inferno.

David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. For more articles please visit David Sims' columnist page.

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