For years, customer service has been built around what's easiest for the business: keeping calls contained, routing customers down a self-serve path and designing website menus around what companies think their customers need. New research suggests European consumers are fed up with this strategy.
Parloa, the leading agentic customer experience (CX) company for enterprises, recently surveyed 750 consumers in the UK, Ireland, France and Germany.
The survey found that 90% of consumers say a brand’s customer experience influences how they perceive the company. So much so that over a third of respondents also said they’ve switched brands after just one poor experience, and nearly half have gone on to tell friends or family about it, hurting brand reputation before some potential customers have even bought once.
Only 6.6% of consumers say their interactions with an interactive voice response (IVR) or chatbot system resolves their issues today and 86.1% of respondents try to skip automation to speak with a human.
European consumers know there's a better way.
Over 75% of respondents believe future AI systems will eventually handle complex requests better than humans, and 55.2% say they're already comfortable trying automation before speaking to a person.
The gap between expectation and delivery is where the largest opportunities for businesses lie, and through the survey, consumers were clear in how that gap can be closed. Just over 92% of respondents said feeling understood shaped their satisfaction with automated support, regardless of whether the issue was resolved by a chatbot or a person.
In addition to feelings of comprehension and empathy, consumers also want speed, but not at the expense of accuracy.
When asked about their most frustrating customer support experiences, long wait times ranked number one. Yet 62.6% of respondents said they would rather wait for a human than get a faster answer that might be wrong. With the majority of European consumers already waiting up to five minutes for resolution in the current state, there's plenty of room for improvement.
Finally, when calls do need to be transferred to a human, consumers want that feeling of understanding and efficiency to transfer with it. They want systems that carry context, rather than forcing a repeat of the same story after a transfer, something 48% of respondents said they expect to happen as a matter of course.
For European founders building their customer experience programs, consumers have just written you a checklist on how to earn their loyalty. The technology is available, and they’re ready to accept it. What it requires from you is a shift in perspective from seeing the support channel as one of deflection to one of connection, one that’s built around what the customer wants instead of what we think they want. Because when it is, loyalty is earned, and revenue follows.
