News: Customer Service/Care
Call centre training: Customer service gaps identified by sales survey
24 September 2008
Customer service training loses none of its pertinence within organisations that facilitate online transactions, a new study suggests.
Furthermore, the survey by global market research firm Harris Interactive indicates that call centre training is likely to increase in importance for businesses with a web-based arm.
Just under half of British adults polled admitted they would switch to a competing company, online or offline, if they were not satisfied with their experience of a particular firm's customer service.
Around 90 per cent of respondents said they expect the same - or better - levels of customer service online as they do offline.
Dr Max Blumberg, the University of London's customer management strategist, remarked that the ramifications of the results could be "huge".
"Customers are operating in a digital age where they have a number of options to quickly make their thoughts known about a company," he noted.
One statistic underlining the importance of both customer service and call centre training involved three-quarters of interviewees revealing their annoyance that customer care representatives lacked knowledge about a particular issue they had queried.
