The amount of information, choice and technological opportunities that are available today make nearly everyone expect more. Customer expectations are rising faster and businesses need to stay up-to-date with customer expectations to respond accordingly. It's no longer enough to put products out on display and expect consumers to buy.
Meeting customer expectations and delivering a great customer experience is equivalent to competitive advantage and must be a top strategic priority. It's a unique opportunity to be different and stand out in a crowded market place.
To enrich the understanding of consumer behavior and expectations today, SMARTASSISTANT and ResearchScape International conducted an extensive survey of 573 consumers in the US, UK and Germany to learn more about their perceptions, expectations, behaviors and habits across various channels, industries, and contexts.
The research reveals that 67% of customers value a good selection in the webshop they choose. Whereas shoppers research many websites before making their decisions, most of them generally buy with maximally 5 webshops per year.
Online consumers generally are very self-suffcicient and wish to perform their buying process independently: 55% prefer self-service over speaking with a sales representative. However, not all websites satisfy the customers need when it comes to finding and selecting a product: German consumers were less satisfied with self-service options: only 34% of German respondents were very or completely satisfied with self-service vs. 54% of US and 52% UK consumers. This points to current self-service solutions not being intuitive, user-friendly, or easy enough to use.
However, buyers demand help with factors such as the functionality of the products, the differentiating factors and how the products fit their specific needs. Self-service options that are insufficient and/or too complex place a growing burden on contact centers. They do not manage to support users and instead increase call-center volume or worse, drive consumers to competitors. Over two-thirds (67%) reported that the primary reason they needed to contact a call center after using a self-service option was because the self-service wasn’t able to support their needs.
SMARTASSISTANT has compiled an infographic sumning up these and more results of their report. The full report is available here.
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