It's been established that consumers aren't crazy about chatbots for customer service needs. But according to a new study, consumers aren't enamored with any other customer service channel either.
And thanks to a recent Wall Street Journal article exposing retailers' use of a customer lifetime value (CLV) score to provide better (or worse) service, consumers' impressions might be clouded even further.
According to a May 2018 survey by consulting firm Northridge Group, no customer service channels were considered easy to use by a majority of US internet users. But phone (48%) and online chat (47%) were the most satisfactory.
And despite the rise of digital customer service assistance, whether self-serve FAQs or artificially intelligent bots, on average, speaking on the phone is still the most popular way to connect with customer service for dealing with payment or billing issues (56%), resolving a problem (54%) and making account changes (43%).
These analog attitudes are changing, though. The number of consumers citing the phone as their preferred channel slipped from 49% in 2015 to 43% this year. Phone is also losing its edge as the fastest channel, dropping from 65% to 54% over the same time period.
This shift is being driven in part by younger consumers. Millennials were the only age group to prefer digital means (44%) over phone (34%). Embracing digital channels declined with age while the silent generation had a higher preference for email than other cohorts.