Global Brands: Improve Your Customers’ Experience, Or See Them Walk
New Survey Finds 60 Percent of Adults Who Communicate With Major Service Providers on Regular Basis Have Switched Due to Poor Customer Service CUPERTINO, CA – March 18, 2008—As leading global brands in insurance/healthcare, telecommunications and retail financial services deal with increasing volumes of customers across multiple channels, the challenge is becoming clear: “Know your customer and every interaction you have with them, or be ready to see them walk.” A recent Harris Interactive® study, commissioned by Chordiant Software (NASDAQ: CHRD), surveyed over 2,000 U.S. adults who regularly interact with high-volume service providers such as credit card companies, mobile providers, insurance carriers or banks. Ninety-five percent of those who do said a “personalized” customer experience is at least somewhat important; 65 percent said it is important, and 27 percent said very important. Personalized is defined as the service provider “knows who I am, my buying history, past problems or complaints, preferences, and billing record.” Asked what they would do if they have a negative experience, 62 percent said they would be likely to cancel their service agreement. In fact the survey revealed 60 percent of these adults have already switched providers as a result of negative experiences. Eighty two percent defined a positive customer experience as “having their needs anticipated or met”. For the global brands handling millions of customers across multiple channels, such as Web, store or branch, agent or broker, while offering multiple products and services from numerous business units – the challenge is formidable. Knowing the individual customer and how best to manage and serve them becomes critical. Seventy percent of adults who communicate with any service provider on a regular basis had a negative customer experience with a telecommunications, credit card, and insurance or financial service provider. Of the 28 percent of these adults who have never switched service providers, a full 78 percent said they would switch if they experienced poor customer service. A recent Forrester Research “Customer Service Best Practice Adoption” report (January 10, 2008) echoed this: “Consumers are increasingly expecting their customer service experience to be seamless, and want the option to be able to transition from self-service to live-service in a single session with no loss of context or information. From a service provider point of view, multichannel orchestration increases the ability to achieve "one-call resolution" of an incident, a major driver of customer satisfaction, or dissatisfaction if not achieved.” “We all know what a poor customer experience looks and feels like, especially in today’s world of multi-channel interactions,” comments Steven R. Springsteel, chairman, president and CEO of Chordiant Software. “The opportunity before us is not only to eradicate poor customer experiences, but actually make the interaction as pleasurable and profitable as possible. For example, when I call my cell phone provider, it’s a huge plus if they proactively know I am eligible for a discounted new handset - or maybe recommend a change to my monthly rate plan because of my usage history. In these highly competitive market spaces, the need for our customers not only to abolish bad experiences but replace them with highly tailored, satisfying interactions becomes critical.” The ability to access individual customer information and interaction history in order to provide a more personalized experience is what customer experience technology is designed to do. Chordiant delivers a comprehensive suite of applications that enhance the quality of every customer interaction. These applications leverage predictive decisioning to assemble and analyze in real-time all the data companies need to anticipate and act on for customers’ needs, interests, and likely behaviors. From a single screen, Chordiant empowers contact center agents to take the Next Best Action™ in any situation during a live customer conversation. By centralizing decisioning technology and implementing a customer experience decision hub, leading global brands can take direct control of the customer experience and provide the personalized and satisfying experience that consumers increasingly demand. To learn more about Chordiant’s Customer Experience solutions visit: http://www.chordiant.com. * For the purposes of this study “Respondents” have been defined as: “U.S. adults ages 18+ who communicate with a service provider on a regular basis”. Survey Methodology