60% of US Customers Prefer Businesses To Communicate Via Text and DMs, Report Finds (venturebeat.com) 83
An anonymous reader quotes a report from VentureBeat: A new study from Intercom shows the stakes are high for customer support and overall customer experience (CX) this holiday season. The survey of 1,000 U.S. adults revealed 64% would leave a business if they didn't feel valued in a support interaction -- only falling behind not having their issue resolved (66%) and getting ghosted by a support representative (65%). Feeling valued and respected is even more important than a quick response (61%). The survey also showed consumers from Gen Z to Baby Boomers prefer digital channels like text and direct messaging to the phone. However, there are striking generational differences in the tone and style that lands well.
For instance, younger generations are twice as likely as older ones to want companies to use emojis and GIFs. Overall, consumers prefer professional language (56%), but 61% of Gen Z respondents prefer a casual approach, signaling that businesses will need to adapt as younger generations become primary buyers. [...] According to the survey, acknowledging a customer's purchase history is more powerful than surface-level niceties. Knowing their history was rated by 66% of respondents as among the top three factors that show they are valued vs. using their first name (45%) or friendly greetings (44%). In fact, support agents using cringe-worthy language (41% -- think misused slang), trying too hard with inauthentic communication (35%) or using too many emojis (28%) will cause consumers to take their business elsewhere.
As advances with OpenAI's ChatGPT expand possibilities for AI chatbots, the study found people prefer chatbots and online chat for answering a quick question (49%), confirming an appointment or delivery time (37%), or canceling an order (30%). In the study, airlines ranked lowest for customer support satisfaction, with only 6% of respondents rating airlines' customer support experience the best. Healthcare and financial services ranked highest.
For instance, younger generations are twice as likely as older ones to want companies to use emojis and GIFs. Overall, consumers prefer professional language (56%), but 61% of Gen Z respondents prefer a casual approach, signaling that businesses will need to adapt as younger generations become primary buyers. [...] According to the survey, acknowledging a customer's purchase history is more powerful than surface-level niceties. Knowing their history was rated by 66% of respondents as among the top three factors that show they are valued vs. using their first name (45%) or friendly greetings (44%). In fact, support agents using cringe-worthy language (41% -- think misused slang), trying too hard with inauthentic communication (35%) or using too many emojis (28%) will cause consumers to take their business elsewhere.
As advances with OpenAI's ChatGPT expand possibilities for AI chatbots, the study found people prefer chatbots and online chat for answering a quick question (49%), confirming an appointment or delivery time (37%), or canceling an order (30%). In the study, airlines ranked lowest for customer support satisfaction, with only 6% of respondents rating airlines' customer support experience the best. Healthcare and financial services ranked highest.
DMs ? (Score:3)
I guess I am old, I thought DMs meant Dungeon Masters...
Anyway I prefer EMail
Re:DMs ? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Direct (private) message on a social network.
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Well, it's marginally better than communicating your support request publicly on social media, which I see all over the place.
I'm amazed that serious businesses actually entertain that, but they do. ...
Actually, come to think of it, the places I worked that did that were not very serious at all, and have either gone out of business or shipped everything off to the Philipines.
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It's often a good way to get their attention. Complain in public, then accept the DM. You can block them when you have finished.
There's nothing wrong with it per se. What, do you give them your landline number? Or maybe your physical home address so they can write to you?
Re:DMs ? (Score:4, Interesting)
It's often a good way to get their attention. Complain in public, then accept the DM. You can block them when you have finished.
There's nothing wrong with it per se.
During the middle of lockdown times, I had a HP computer I was responsible for go bad. Still under Warranty. I dunno if HP had tried to implement a humanless support system, but it wasn't working. I kept getting into this chatbot loop online. Then I tried the telephone - a new chatbot. I ended up going to Facebook of all places.
Damn - even they had a chatbot.
Finally, I wrote on FB that I was going to take them to small claims court, put my number on the message and if they botblocked me again, they'd be filed that day.
10 minutes, and a human calls. After all the BS, she was about as pleasant as a person could be. Then a tech guy to make certain what the problem was, and back to the lady. New computer showed up at my place a couple days later.
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For a while there I found that the best way to get a company to respond to you was to shame them on Twitter. Unfortunately, Musk has fucked that all up, they don't take it seriously any more
Re: DMs ? (Score:1)
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Imagine the following scenario. You're in a public restaurant at a mixer. You're meeting new people. You find someone who's really interesting, and you want to get to know that person better. So you invite him/her to the private room in the back to have a more intimate discussion.
Was that for dumbfucks for exact same reason too? Because one of the defining features of gen Z is that their social lives have moved from places like restaurants and bars to social networks.
Re:DMs ? (Score:4, Interesting)
I have worked in support. NO ONE wants to do phone support. The result is only the incompetent expendables are assigned to the phones. They burn out after about six months of dealing with profane abuse and garrulous lonely grandmothers.
Even if the phone support people were competent (they're not), a phone is a terrible format for resolving technical issues.
A chat session allows the rep to do some research and give you correct information. If your question is common, the rep can cut and paste an authoritative answer rather than giving you a verbal summary filtered through the brain of the dumbest guy in the building.
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If other options are *better* for the customer the phone becomes last resort. The problem is that it simply often is significantly worse trying to deal with chat.
Re: DMs ? (Score:3)
Not having "aways on top" windows too (like in M$ Windoze)
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Unfortunately a chat session also allows the rep to talk to a dozen different customers at once, making the individual experience a protracted exchange that takes so long to get through the BS parts that you feel like screaming and giving up before you get anywhere.
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The solution is to multitask. Type in your problem. Then work on something else or browse Slashdot until you notice a response. Type your reply, then go back to your other task. Repeat until done. It will take a while, but is much more likely than a phone call to result in correct information, plus you have a written log of the conversation.
Re: DMs ? (Score:2)
Re: DMs ? (Score:2)
How many concurrent chat do they do at the same time? By the 2-4 minutes average between answers to very basic questions, I would say at least 10.
Re:DMs ? (Score:4, Interesting)
I have worked in support. NO ONE wants to do phone support. The result is only the incompetent expendables are assigned to the phones. They burn out after about six months of dealing with profane abuse and garrulous lonely grandmothers.
Even if the phone support people were competent (they're not), a phone is a terrible format for resolving technical issues.
A chat session allows the rep to do some research and give you correct information. If your question is common, the rep can cut and paste an authoritative answer rather than giving you a verbal summary filtered through the brain of the dumbest guy in the building.
I've done some human phone interactions with Amazon recently, and they have been pretty competent. This was after a chat didn't produce anything useful.
One thing that was different was that the chatbot eventually gave a "have Amazon call me" checkbox, and within a minute, I was on the line with an actual human.
Re:DMs ? (Score:4, Informative)
I have worked in support. NO ONE wants to do phone support.
I'm old....I my mid 40s anyway....and used to much prefer phone support for things. I usually found that the immediate back and forth helped the support person understand what I needed much faster.
But I don't now. I think that is due to the combination of what you describe: low skill types falling through to the phones. But it is also due to companies requiring those people to layer other crap on top of the conversation. There is now almost always some sort of sales pitch the caller has to sit through before getting to their actual problem. Do you know we have other services you can subscribe to? or You can save lots of money if you bundle a bunch of crap you don't want!.
I don't blame talented people for not wanting to be part of that. And it has made the prospect of having to use phone support very unappealing. A lot of companies have moved cancellations to phone only so they can make their customers sit through absurd pitches and intentionally slow down the process to get them to change their minds. No one who has options wants to do that for a living.
I don't think phone support is inherently bad (Score:3)
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I only answer the phone from recognized numbers; too much spam. Email is a similar issue (not quite as bad), but Text is generally manageable.
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Re: DMs ? (Score:1)
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I was thinking of Depeche Mode. They're down another member and there's only 2 of them left. They must be very busy with this, too busy to make another album...
Re: DMs ? (Score:2)
Re: DMs ? (Score:1)
You can't properly bawl someone out over text/DM. (Score:2)
What Do The Other 40% Want? (Score:2)
This is the real question.
Re: What Do The Other 40% Want? (Score:2)
"Prefer" (Score:5, Insightful)
the study found people prefer chatbots and online chat for answering a quick question (49%), confirming an appointment or delivery time (37%), or canceling an order (30%).
49%, 37%, and 30% do not indicate a positive thing, it means 51%, 63%, and 70% prefer the opposite. This article was written by a GPT shill.
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In this context, how can we tell whether the GPT shill was a human shilling for GPT-based solutions, or a GPT implementation shilling for text-based messaging formats?
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In this context, how can we tell whether the GPT shill was a human shilling for GPT-based solutions, or a GPT implementation shilling for text-based messaging formats?
I mean - who cares as long as we get emoji's? Pisses me off when my support doesn't use emojis. 8^)
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Pisses me off when my support doesn't use emojis. 8^)
I feel like slashdot could do better on this front too, it was an early pioneer in communication among the most adept nerds. Slashdot should have emoji support, but not normie-tier emojis, we need composite emojis, like a write your own hieroglyph type of emoji compositioning system. For example: ":+8==>:+:)" == "a smiling eggplant emoji" - those persistently-creepy QotD's at the bottom of /. screens clearly suggest they have the AI skills to implement this.
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Right....and consider the source of the survey. Per the article: Intercom. Which seems to be some sort of "customer service text/chat solution provider". So, they're probably not the best source for a quality, unbiased survey.
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Text/email vs phone/voice...sure, whatever. But "direct messaging to the phone", without clarification, sounds like some sort of social media stupidity.
If you're having a support issue that's going south...you're going to get sick of that overly casual approach, real quick...and wish you were talking to someone that was speaking to you like an adult. If they just default to "professionalism", there's not much chance of things going wrong.
If "Gen Z" feels uncomfortable with people talking to them like adul
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If "Gen Z" feels uncomfortable with people talking to them like adults...well, then maybe they need to grow the fuck up...because eventually they will grow up...and eventually they will have some sort of support issue they want to get resolved promptly, without a bunch of cutsey bullshit.
"Support" issues arise when things are going wrong...a smiley face emoji isn't going to unfuck the situation if you're dealing with a billing issue, or a tree that has fallen on your house.
This. I find it amazing that any group would want emojis as part of a support claim. Maybe, just maybe a smiley face at the end if the problem was fixed.
But otherwise, I'll escalate the hell out of a case if I start getting that shite in the middle of a support chat.
I'm looking for a problem fix, not internet influencer action
Waiting time (Score:3)
Dealing with companies on the phone is a huge pain in the ass...
If you call them, they usually don't have enough agents and you spend a long time in a queue. If they call you back, it's usually at an extremely inconvenient time.
An asynchronous approach is MUCH better. Send an email or other form of message, and receive a response after some time, the response doesn't have to be immediate so long as you can get on with other things and don't have to be sitting around waiting for it.
Another annoyance i have is you send a message to "start a chat", they take 20 hours to respond to your initial message then give you only 30 minutes to respond to them or they close the case. I have no problem with getting a response after 20 hours, but the same courtesy should be extended to me because when this has happened to me i've usually been asleep.
Re:Waiting time (Score:4, Insightful)
An asynchronous approach only works if you can convey your entire issue and all supporting relevant information in a single "send".
Unfortunately what actually happens is just as much back-and-forth as a phone conversation, including all of the pointless repetition, except you have to sit there and twiddle your thumbs for an excessively long amount of time between each exchange.
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Well the point is that you don't sit there and twiddle your thumbs, you send the message and then forget about it and do other stuff until you get the reply.
Re: Waiting time (Score:2)
That would be great, except I either miss the reply and things timeout because Iâ(TM)ve fallen in to concentration on another subject, or it interrupts my train of thought and I have spend time getting back there again. Multi-tasking doesnâ(TM)t work. Give me a real conversation any day of the week.
I hate when strangers call me by first name. (Score:1)
It's a liberty they're taking that I don't want to give to just everyone.
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There was a section in my online banking asking how I would like to be referred as so I chose 'Oh Mighty One'. Still waiting for them to all me that when they answer the phone :-/
what is this ranking? (Score:2)
In other news (Score:2)
50% of people are below average intelligence.
[I have karma to burn!]
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You're thinking about median, not average.
Dunning Kruger (Score:2)
Re: Dunning Kruger (Score:2)
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Intelligence is a fairly normalized distribution.
All depend on the granularity of your sample.
Of course, we have this IQ thing done up as a range, so it does appear to be normalized. It would probably look different if we picked a number as average.
Anyhow, I use the statement as symbolically telling people that not everyone is smart (which isn't even an IQ thing in the first place) and that a lot of people do or believe stupid things.
Although quite incorrect, the smart people figure that out pretty quickly.
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Wow, you got pretty much everything wrong. 'Average' can refer to the mean the mean, median, or mode. IQ scores are normally distributed, so 'average' here refers to the top of the bell curve, which just so happens to be the same as the mean.
The main point of OpenAI & ChatGPT... (Score:2)
Re: The main point of OpenAI & ChatGPT... (Score:2)
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AI LLMs like OpenAI's, already have real-world applications, i.e. fundamental research to understand how language works (especially useful in Cognitive Linguistics), applied research in how to solve real-world language processing problems & how to make problem solving more efficient (& affordable), & already existing commercial services such as SketchEngine's corpus tools, whi
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Re: The main point of OpenAI & ChatGPT... (Score:2)
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Because it's easier to block (Score:2)
In other words (Score:3)
A majority of people prefer to take the longest possible communication route.
Is it any wondre people complain they never have enough time. When you're wasting what you have sending texts rather than picking up a phone and talking to someone, or one or two emails with all the information you need, you can't complain about adulting being so difficult.
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A majority of people prefer to take the longest possible communication route.
Is it any wondre people complain they never have enough time. When you're wasting what you have sending texts rather than picking up a phone and talking to someone, or one or two emails with all the information you need, you can't complain about adulting being so difficult.
No, it means we want it to be asynchronous. We don't want to put off the rest of our activities for the day on the off chance that the phone rep will finally pick up, or that when does, we'll be able to understand his thick accent or that he'll actually do anything useful.
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A majority of people prefer to take the longest possible communication route.
Is it any wondre people complain they never have enough time. When you're wasting what you have sending texts rather than picking up a phone and talking to someone, or one or two emails with all the information you need, you can't complain about adulting being so difficult.
Your call is important to us, you are number 243387334 in the queue, please hold the line.
After I sit on hold for 2 hours I'm connected to Jeffry in India who can barely speak English and has to stop every time you break their script and start again from the beginning of their script. At the end of this you find even though you've got all your info ready, they "cant" (read: won't) help you and end up disconnecting the call. It can be even worse if they know they can get away with lying over the phone bec
As if companies cared what customers want... (Score:3)
Banks have figured this out (Score:2)
It's typically phone call or snail mail only for them. They don't want to talk with you.
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I chose a bank that literally doesn't have branches, doesn't have a phone line (except for fraud reporting) and doesn't call you.
I did so deliberately.
Because now they HAVE to give me functionality that I want, and allow me to do everything they want me to do (e.g. take out a loan or overdraft, open a joint account, close an account, dispute a transaction etc.) entirely in their app.
I've never had such a smooth banking experience since moving to them. I just click buttons and it comes back with what I want
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It's a pattern that's made me follow it for all the providers I can - my phone provider, my utilities, etc. If you don't have humans dealing with things, then I have to be able to do them myself. Computer can say "no", sure, and there's human checks somewhere I'm sure, but removing those front-end level-1-tech humans that just got in my way and were powerless to do anything just makes everything so much simpler, cheaper and quicker.
Exactly so.
(Granted, computers can be even more obscure, or persistent about upselling, but they can't exploit my social reluctance to be rude, so I don't put up with it from them.)
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It's typically phone call or snail mail only for them. They don't want to talk with you.
TBF, one of my banks (Citibank UK and AU) is the only company I'll think nothing of calling first.
They've still offshored their call centres but to the Philippines rather than to India. Pinoys have a much easier to understand accent and most have been speaking English their whole lives (to be fair, it's American English but I can't blame the Filipinos for that).
Not every company hates it's customers, but I'll grant you they are getting rare as hens teeth these days.
Re: Banks have figured this out (Score:2)
It's typically phone call ...
They don't want to talk with you.
Wut?
Banks are all over the place on this. After switching from paper to on-line statements years ago, one of my banks has a very good system. Transactions show up when cleared. I can fetch an image of a cancelled check on the spot and do most other work throught their website. Another makes monthly on-line statements available. Just as out of date as the old paper copy. Want to know if a check cleared? Wait for next month's statement. Everything else is "go to the bank, stand in line and the next teller wi
The problem with chat (Score:2)
Is that 90% of the times, you only lose your time and they say you have to call in for this particular case of support.
No way (Score:2)
Well count me as NOT ONE OF THEM.
I absolutely will not give my mobile number to any company. Why in the world would I want to be that invaded, distracted, and disturbed?
Email. And usually one not linked to my phone, thank you. Same with any message that doesn't need to be immediate. My life is not ruled by my phone. When I get home, I check my Email on my desktop, respond as needed, and move on. Being "connected" all the time is driving people insane, even if they don't know it.
I prefer chat for support, BUT... (Score:2)
When online chat first came out as a customer support option, it was a godsend. No more emails that got ghosted, no more repeating the same information over and over again on a phone call. When you had to send long error codes and receive RMA numbers, the process was unambiguous. And at the end of the conversation, you had a written record that you could save.
Then companies began hitting us with chatbots and having their reps spread themselves too thin over multiple conversations. I hate the idea of federal
Well, this is unclear (Score:3)
The problem is that the question being asked leaves too much to interpretation. The better question:
"Assuming the CSR you're communicating with is properly equipped to solve your problem in a timely manner, and assuming hold and waiting periods were short regardless of medium, which method of communication would you prefer to use with your CSR?"
In my experience, there are two major advantages to text/chat communication with support reps. The first is that you're not dealing with an IVR that's eight menus deep, only to realize you've guessed wrong and the person you're talking to has to put you in the right queue. It's that much more complicated when the phone systems try to parse what you say for keywords; those were oversold in their capabilities and have been a pox ever since. Chat systems don't generally have this problem; the person on the other end of the DM thread is capable of assigning the chat to someone else if needed (funny, they used to have a name for people who did that with phone calls....).
The second big advantage chat sessions have is that the customer has access to them. If it goes sufficiently poorly in a demonstrable way, the customer can take screenshots and post it on Twitter or Instagram, and now the company has to deal with a social media mob. CSRs on chat systems seem to be given a bit more leeway and I'm likely to cite this as a cause.
Every so often, I manage to get a CSR on the phone who is absolutely fantastic. They pay attention to what I've said, work with me to resolve the issue, and do whatever it takes on their end to get me to a solution, and once in a great while, I get such a CSR with a very short hold time. If this was the *norm*, I think the numbers would change a bit, because good phone support with a truly dedicated CSR is likely to be preferred overall than chat sessions. I submit that it is possible that these numbers reflect the disparity.
Bonus thought: Gen-Z liking Emojis and GIFs from customer service reps may well have to do with the reps they talk to. The summary is unclear as to which companies the respondents were discussing. I've contacted customer service with EveryPlate/HelloFresh once or twice, it was informal, and I was happy with that. I contacted American Express one time with a car rental situation that went left; the CSR was 'business casual', and I was happy with that. If I'm talking to my insurance company about a car accident and they send me a GIF at any stage in our discussion, I'm looking elsewhere come renewal time. If I'm dealing with a mortgage or a financial advisor or a medical professional of some kind, "sir" and "ma'am" are the order of the day. Then, there's the IRS.....
I'm sure *some* of the Gen-Z individuals who were surveyed have needed services from a financial advisor or a mortgage broker, but I don't think the majority of Gen-Z has been in a place to need such services, as the oldest is 25. I would submit that if the questionnaire were broken down by the nature of what's being supported, that the answers would likely be more in alignment - if a boomer is thinking "mortgage broker" and a zoomer is thinking "optional subscription box service" when answering, that's going to shift things. If these things were stipulated in the survey, I'd still absolutely believe that Gen-Z would prefer texting to calling, but I think there might be a greater number of boomers willing to text over an Amazon product return as well as an increase in phone call preference for medical matters amongst adults in their early twenties.
insanity (Score:2)
You expect to feel valued by a large business? Sure, they should definitely humor your delusions. If the have one million customers, they will value you for a total credit of 1/1,000,000 shekels. And if they have a sucker born every day, reduce that to zero, and if you bother to contact them, reduce it to -100 shekels.
my favourite customer support (Score:2)
My preference... (Score:2)
Yes, please. (Score:2)
Because of speech and hearing impediments. Also, recording everything visually for references and proofs.