Automatons NOT Automation are the Worst thing about Contact Centres Inisoft Study finds
– Repeating your complaint to multiple agents is the biggest customer gripe
– Confident, well-equipped staff are more likely to engage with customers
Contact centres staffed by operatives who are not able to make decisions rate considerably worse than contact centres that can automate processes, according to polling[1] for Inisoft.
The poll of 2,000 UK adults overturns the received wisdom that automation is a bad thing for customer experience.
Top irritations for customers were:
1. Having to repeat your complaint to multiple people (58.40%)
2. Being placed on hold repeatedly during the call as staff checked policy (40.40%)
3. Feeling like the person you’re speaking to is reading from a script (32.00%)
4. Not feeling that the person you are speaking to has the authority to fix the problem (31.70%)
5. Feeling like the person you are speaking to is insincere (15.40%)
Oonagh McBride, the Head of Inisoft commented,
“All of the major customer bugbears are the sorts of experiences typical in a call to a poorly equipped call centre.”
“Ironically, call centres that lack proper automation tend to give customers the impression that they are talking to automatons. A poorly equipped call centre will have staff floundering to find the answer to increasingly complex enquiries from customers, leading to delays, inconsistency and frustration. When confronted with ill-prepared call centre staff, customers often express fury.”
The research also highlighted the importance of agent confidence when it comes to hearing customer problems and going off script if required. In fact, 75% of those polled stated that receiving an apology was important. For those aged 35-54, over 30% consider the apology to be ‘very important’.
Oonagh added: “The more technology that call centre operatives have at their disposal, the more they are able to do what they do best, which is to communicate naturally with customers in the sure knowledge that they have all the resources they need.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, only 6% of customers claim that their experience with contact centres is always good – or that there were no frustrations.
Inisoft is a specialist software company providing software solutions that are focused on meeting the needs of contact centres, economic development bodies, financial services organisations and further education colleges. Inisoft is owned by Kura, an independent market leading contact centre outsourcer.
Additional Information
Inisoft is a dynamic and forward-thinking software company, specialising in contact centre and college technology. Our solutions are sold across the globe and our impressive client list ranges from blue-chip organizations to SMEs and public sector entities. What makes us unique is that we develop software that works for real people, with every feature designed to solve real problems.
We’ve been in operation since 1990 and our Head Office is based in Scotland.
Inisoft is owned by Kura, an independent market leading provider of outsourced contact centre services and software solutions for many of the UK’s most successful brands.
For additional information visit the Inisoft Website
[1] Research carried out by Censuswide for Inisoft between 9th-11th November 2016. Omnibus poll took a representative sample of 2,002 UK adults.
