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| [May 01, 2006] |
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International Poll Finds Americans Twice as Frustrated With Bad English Than With Technical Incompetence of Contact Center Agents; Foreign Accents Most Significant Contact Center Frustration Among U.S. Respondents
SEATTLE, Wash. --(Business Wire)-- May 1, 2006 -- A new international contact center survey reveals that Americans balk more at customer service agents with hard-to-understand accents than with those who don't understand the problem they are calling about.
Conducted for NetReflector, a leading provider of enterprise feedback solutions for major corporations, the research explored customer experiences of interacting with contact centers in nine countries around the world.
When asked what frustrates them most about contact centers, U.S. respondents say bad accents (29%) are their top complaint followed by rude or condescending agents (18%), being made to wait too long on the line (17%), or having to listen to an agent "upgrade" their services (15%).
"With support jobs moving to China and India, it's not surprising that English-speaking countries' top frustration revolves around the difficulty of understanding customer service representatives," said Bob Hayes, Ph.D., expert in customer satisfaction measurement and author of the book Measuring Customer Satisfaction: Survey Design, Use, and Statistical Analysis Methods. "However, even if the level of customer service is exceptional, the extent to which poorly-understood accents trump quality of service speaks to English-speaking customers' growing intolerance of non-native speech, more so than in other countries."
Consumers in non-English-speaking markets rate other issues as more problematic. For example, for the French and the Germans, waiting on the phone is the prime problem, while the leading frustration for the Chinese and Russian respondents is that contact center staff is condescending or rude.
You Say Potato, I Say Online Chat
The findings substantiate a growing trend among companies to find alternatives to counter Americans' increasingly hostile attitudes towards overseas contact center agents, including online chat, email, and improved automated voice systems that can resolve problems more quickly. Other companies are bringing front-line customer service operations back home, but leaving their back-office processing overseas. Still, others are investing heavily in "foreign accent reduction therapy" where accents are neutralized to appeal to the English-speaking population.
Finding creative ways to circumvent the phone call could prove difficult. However, as the poll also finds out, over three-quarters of U.S. respondents prefer to contact customer service departments by phone (76%) over email (20%), chat (1.8%) or mail (1%). Americans win first place in this category, citing "personal contact" (48%), "convenience" (25%), and "speed" (21%) as reasons for choosing to pick up the phone over any other method. At 75%, Canadians come in second for favoring phone contact and Australians weigh in third at 74%. Although all nine countries preferred interacting over the phone, a surprising 27% of Russians favored the chat room -- over five times the global average (5%) -- as a way of asking for help.
The Costs of Poor Customer Service
The definition of good customer service seems fairly consistent: across the world, a good customer service experience is one in which the customer interacts with a knowledgeable service agent who can handle problems quickly and effectively. Less important are the interpersonal skills of the service agent as well as how long a customer is required to wait before they become impatient (the global average for willing to wait 5-10 minutes is 48%; Americans weigh in at 46%).
However, the costs of a bad customer service interaction, regardless of the reason, run consistently high across the globe: the poll finds that 86% of respondents would likely or very likely move to a competitor following a poor experience. Customers from Brazil, however, are more likely to switch to a competitor (91%) compared to the UK (84%), USA (82%), or Russia (81%).
The research was powered by global market intelligence solutions provider GMI (Global Market Insite, Inc.) on behalf of its wholly owned subsidiary NetReflector in March 2006. 9,000 people were surveyed online in nine countries -- Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Russia, the UK and USA.
About NetReflector
NetReflector, Inc. provides global corporations with scalable enterprise feedback solutions that maximize profits by converting feedback into loyalty. Some of the world's largest and most respected companies have chosen NetReflector to help them optimize customers employee, and partner satisfaction. NetReflector enables measurable feedback on these three valuable business assets anywhere in the world, in any language, at any time, and at every touchpoint of their organization. A wholly-owned subsidiary of GMI (Global Market Insite, Inc.), NetReflector is based in Seattle, WA and has operations on five continents around the globe. The company has offices in London and Newbury. For more information, please visit www.netreflector.com or email us at info@netreflector.com.
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