Australians Found Wasted 89.5 Million Hours ‘On Hold’ Waiting For Customer Service
On average, every Australian has spent an average of seven hours over the past 18 months trying to resolve issues or complaints, equivalent to 89.5 million hours wasted since June 2020.
The unresolved trauma of repeated hold music, long wait times and the frightening stop of a pre-recorded apology for the hold-up was enough to boil anyone’s blood.
Now, new research has shown that the pandemic has raised our customer service expectations.
But of course, many organizations (as people find out the hard way) have failed to keep up.
Evidence of this comes as Lonergan research for ServiceNow shows that the average time spent on hold has increased by 53 percent since the pandemic began.
The results also identified three areas that businesses need to raise service levels.
These areas are in speed, operation, and understanding and interaction.
Vice president and managing director, ServiceNow, Australia and New Zealand, Eric Swift, said, “Expectations about customer service are rising, so critical organizations are raising their game.”
The Need For Speed
Speed comes to mind for customer service and having issues fixed quickly (51 percent) is the most important factor when rating good customer service.
Delays and increasing time spent dealing with issues are a source of great frustration for customers.
However, the good news is that when customers experience great service, it has the power to change their relationships with a brand.
Thus customers are more likely to be honest and more likely to forgive mistakes in the future.
Swift added, “Customers are looking for simple, streamlined and personalized service. They want to resolve issues quickly, without having to talk to multiple people or move to different departments.”
A Recipe For Success, Depending On Your Age
In addition to speed, customers want businesses to understand them personally and truly show their organization by understanding and interacting with them.
But, different generations have big differences in what they consider good service.
75 percent of Baby Boomers believe that talking to someone is essential for good customer service.
In contrast, only 33 percent of Millenials and 16 percent of Gen Z have the same feelings.
Winners And Losers
When trying to resolve issues or complaints, the industries ranked as having the best customer service are grocery and supermarkets (25 percent), health care services (14 percent), and the food and beverage sector (14 percent. ).
Telecommunications (28 per cent) and government (25 per cent) were ranked as providing the worst services, followed by financial services (13 per cent).
The Blame Game
Australian customers identified key factors such as lack of staff, too many teams, lack of authority and lack of ownership to be the tree behind the bad experience.
Summarizing the research, Swift said, “This research shows that contacting customer service is very often a frustrating experience.”
“Speed, delivery and interaction can all be greatly improved if companies use the right technology to better connect different teams and departments.”
This will allow customers to get what they want, quickly and easily.