Contact Service Desk. Where do customers care more: in IT services or repair of air conditioners?
Last winter, we conducted a study of small IT outsourcing sites throughout Russia as part of which we studied how companies interact with their customers. Understanding the organization of customer interaction is important for us to develop a cloud ticket system Okdesk .
The results we, to put it mildly, upset. We hoped that the crisis shook up the players in the market and forced them to become more customer-oriented in terms of organizing convenient channels for contacting support and filing applications. The reality turned out to be sobering:
• every 4th site did not offer even 2 basic interaction channels for communication : a phone number and email;
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• A total of 9 out of 100 companies offered on the website 4 ways to submit an application ;
• Only 1.3% of the sites found all the investigated communication options with service support .
Is it really the same in the highly specialized service business? We decided to check it out on an even larger scale!
Do you have a chance to repair the air conditioner, leave a request for a disabled elevator or complain about problems in the gas boiler?
For the second phase of the study, about 500 sites were selected (about 60% more than in winter) for the following requests:
For correctness of comparison, the list of cities was left virtually the same: Voronezh, Yekaterinburg, Kazan, Krasnodar, Krasnoyarsk, Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, Novosibirsk, Perm, etc.
As at the first stage, the analysis assumed the verification of the presence on the site of the following 5 options for contacting support service:
We have already explained why we chose these 5 channels.
For the purity of the experiment, we also did not analyze the actual availability of the dispatcher when calling by phone or by the manager when contacting support chat. Although, we will not hide, the desire to “dig in” this part appeared after the first stage.
Thus, the conditions for both studies were almost identical. Only a sample of the number of sites in the 2nd stage increased - by 60%.
The first, but very big chagrin. Unlike the first stage of the study, among the sites of highly specialized service companies, we unfortunately found even the 404th error in the “Contacts” section.
At such moments, our emotions were comparable to the picture below. And this is taking into account the fact that within the framework of the study, of course, we did not have a real problem to contact a service provider.
Support chats are installed on most sites (thanks to free rates), but dispatchers are almost always offline. In this case, opposite this channel at a specific site, we put “0”.
We didn’t find a phone to contact support at only 2 sites , while both basic interaction channels (contact number and email) with the company were found in 79% of the research objects.
That is, every 5th business of repairing an air conditioner, elevator or gas boiler offers you only one contact option for solving your problems and this is, in fact, the most closed and non-client-oriented channel - “Sending a letter by email”.
In general, and unfortunately, these figures correlate with the results for the IT service business: 96% and 77%, respectively.
But in the presence of web forms, in one form or another, the business of repairing gas boilers, elevators and air conditioners “ran away” from IT outsourcing ahead. 68% vs. 51% respectively.
Access to the “Client Portal” or “My Account” with the functions of registration of applications, we found only 9.9% of the “respondents”. For comparison, the results of the 1st stage revealed 21% of the sites. Overall, this is not surprising. IT service providers are more mature in business automation and a much larger number of them have specialized Help Desk solutions with this functionality.
Of course, we were looking for the most "client-oriented" and "multichannel" sites in terms of customer interaction with service support. Therefore, it was important to check the presence of several ways at the same time to contact the Help Desk.
Unfortunately, the test for the presence of 4 main channels of circulation (we, as we wrote in the first study, do not consider online chat as main) only 6.7% of “students” (more than 30 sites) passed to the support service.
Surprisingly, despite the 1.6-fold increase in the sample, the percentage of sites that have all 5 of the studied access methods coincided to the tenths - 1.3%.
The overall picture for IT outsourcing and highly specialized service companies throughout Russia is almost the same. Correlations in the availability and provision of its customers with convenient channels for interaction with customer support are significant, and the indicators themselves are at a rather low level. Most likely, many figures on the basis of 2 studies can be considered starting in general for the entire service industry of the Russian Federation.
Strangely enough, but the highly specialized service business prefers to use the web form as a method of communication with the client. 68% of the sites of “respondents” instead of 51% of IT outsourcing.
What is a “Client Portal” and, as a result, companies that are engaged in repairing elevators, gas boilers and air conditioners are not transparent to the client. Their maturity in this part lags far behind their IT services colleagues 9.9% versus 21%. In this case, the entire service business maturity in this part is clearly not enough.
In contrast to companies specializing in the provision of IT services, many of the “respondents” in the second stage of the research also sell equipment or, on the contrary, the stores provide service services, which is generally very reasonable.
And what is the most convenient way for you to interact with the service company support service?
The results we, to put it mildly, upset. We hoped that the crisis shook up the players in the market and forced them to become more customer-oriented in terms of organizing convenient channels for contacting support and filing applications. The reality turned out to be sobering:
• every 4th site did not offer even 2 basic interaction channels for communication : a phone number and email;
')
• A total of 9 out of 100 companies offered on the website 4 ways to submit an application ;
• Only 1.3% of the sites found all the investigated communication options with service support .
Is it really the same in the highly specialized service business? We decided to check it out on an even larger scale!
Do you have a chance to repair the air conditioner, leave a request for a disabled elevator or complain about problems in the gas boiler?
Methods of research channels contacting support (Help Desk)
For the second phase of the study, about 500 sites were selected (about 60% more than in winter) for the following requests:
- maintenance and repair of air conditioners;
- maintenance and repair of elevators;
- maintenance and repair of gas boilers.
For correctness of comparison, the list of cities was left virtually the same: Voronezh, Yekaterinburg, Kazan, Krasnodar, Krasnoyarsk, Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, Novosibirsk, Perm, etc.
As at the first stage, the analysis assumed the verification of the presence on the site of the following 5 options for contacting support service:
- email address;
- telephone number;
- online chat;
- web application form;
- access to the client portal.
We have already explained why we chose these 5 channels.
For the purity of the experiment, we also did not analyze the actual availability of the dispatcher when calling by phone or by the manager when contacting support chat. Although, we will not hide, the desire to “dig in” this part appeared after the first stage.
Thus, the conditions for both studies were almost identical. Only a sample of the number of sites in the 2nd stage increased - by 60%.
Statistics on the use of channels to contact service support
The first, but very big chagrin. Unlike the first stage of the study, among the sites of highly specialized service companies, we unfortunately found even the 404th error in the “Contacts” section.
At such moments, our emotions were comparable to the picture below. And this is taking into account the fact that within the framework of the study, of course, we did not have a real problem to contact a service provider.
Support chats are installed on most sites (thanks to free rates), but dispatchers are almost always offline. In this case, opposite this channel at a specific site, we put “0”.
We didn’t find a phone to contact support at only 2 sites , while both basic interaction channels (contact number and email) with the company were found in 79% of the research objects.
That is, every 5th business of repairing an air conditioner, elevator or gas boiler offers you only one contact option for solving your problems and this is, in fact, the most closed and non-client-oriented channel - “Sending a letter by email”.
In general, and unfortunately, these figures correlate with the results for the IT service business: 96% and 77%, respectively.
But in the presence of web forms, in one form or another, the business of repairing gas boilers, elevators and air conditioners “ran away” from IT outsourcing ahead. 68% vs. 51% respectively.
Access to the “Client Portal” or “My Account” with the functions of registration of applications, we found only 9.9% of the “respondents”. For comparison, the results of the 1st stage revealed 21% of the sites. Overall, this is not surprising. IT service providers are more mature in business automation and a much larger number of them have specialized Help Desk solutions with this functionality.
Of course, we were looking for the most "client-oriented" and "multichannel" sites in terms of customer interaction with service support. Therefore, it was important to check the presence of several ways at the same time to contact the Help Desk.
Unfortunately, the test for the presence of 4 main channels of circulation (we, as we wrote in the first study, do not consider online chat as main) only 6.7% of “students” (more than 30 sites) passed to the support service.
Surprisingly, despite the 1.6-fold increase in the sample, the percentage of sites that have all 5 of the studied access methods coincided to the tenths - 1.3%.
Instead of summing up
The overall picture for IT outsourcing and highly specialized service companies throughout Russia is almost the same. Correlations in the availability and provision of its customers with convenient channels for interaction with customer support are significant, and the indicators themselves are at a rather low level. Most likely, many figures on the basis of 2 studies can be considered starting in general for the entire service industry of the Russian Federation.
Strangely enough, but the highly specialized service business prefers to use the web form as a method of communication with the client. 68% of the sites of “respondents” instead of 51% of IT outsourcing.
What is a “Client Portal” and, as a result, companies that are engaged in repairing elevators, gas boilers and air conditioners are not transparent to the client. Their maturity in this part lags far behind their IT services colleagues 9.9% versus 21%. In this case, the entire service business maturity in this part is clearly not enough.
In contrast to companies specializing in the provision of IT services, many of the “respondents” in the second stage of the research also sell equipment or, on the contrary, the stores provide service services, which is generally very reasonable.
And what is the most convenient way for you to interact with the service company support service?
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/309344/
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