BOSTON, Sept. 12, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Today, LogMeIn, Inc. (Nasdaq:LOGM) released a new study designed to analyze the business impact and consumer attitudes of today’s customer journey. The LogMeIn 2018 AI Customer Experience Study surveyed over 5,000 respondents made up of both business leaders and consumers around the globe. The research found that over one-third of consumers were not impressed with their customer journey, citing an average or poor experience with 83% of consumers citing that they had at least one issue while interacting with a brand. Businesses, on the other hand, are reporting much different numbers. Eighty percent of businesses believe their customers would give them a favorable review despite also reporting that less than half of customer queries are resolved during the first interaction. This disconnect shows that companies are setting the bar for "good" service too low, which could have significant business impact as customer experience becomes even more vital in the buying decision of consumers.
In fact, the research shows that while retail and travel and hospitality industries lead the pack when it comes to good customer experience, only 58% of consumers rate their experience highly in each of these sectors, while telecoms ranked worst with only 41% of consumers giving a favorable rating. This contradiction between the customer and business perception is a pervasive issue plaguing companies of all sizes and industries.
Consumers Rely on Classic Channels Despite Providing Slower Resolution
Both business and consumer respondents agree that telephone and email are among the most common channels used to conduct business, however they also tend to produce the slowest time to resolution. Consumers reported that the average time to resolution was 11 hours – which is nearly 3 times higher than the wait time they cited as being acceptable. And these times increase for those using telephone interactions (7 hours) and email (18 hours). In addition, these channels aren’t providing effective results with businesses reporting that only 49% of problems are solved on the first interaction. These wait times and issues with first contact resolution are likely due to the fact that 68% of businesses believe their agents struggle with the volume of customer requests.
Businesses Are Investing in Customer Experience
Feeling that traditional customer engagement solutions aren’t meeting expectations, 61% of business respondents said they will allocate more budget to new solutions specifically designed for customer engagement over the next 12 months. In addition, 35% of businesses have already invested in emerging technologies like AI with another 53% planning to invest. Companies anticipate these investments will increase customer satisfaction, resolve customer inquiries more quickly, be able to provide a more personalized experience and increase agent satisfaction levels. In addition, over 70% of consumers want brands to leverage technology to reduce time to resolution.
Chatbots: A Realistic View
Today, only 32% of consumers believe they get the best results when interacting with a brand when an AI-powered chatbot is involved in some capacity – either as a self-service tool or to assist a human agent. And while there is a portion of consumers who are skeptical about chatbots, a majority (74%) see the benefits for customer service.
Businesses agree that chatbots can help deliver the faster resolutions for customers while also helping agents be more productive and effective. To date, customer service agents use an average of 3 different systems to service a customer and spend over half their time understanding basic facts like customer profile information and the nature of the inquiry. Operating behind the scenes chatbots can gather this information in real-time – informing the agent of who they are talking to, their history with the brand, the potential problem the customer is having, and how to solve it. Having this information at the outset leaves agents more time to spend on resolving the issue. And answering the hot button question of whether chatbots will replace human jobs, the answer was no. In fact, 65% of organizations reported that if chatbots could reduce inquiries into call centers, they would train agents to handle different or additional tasks.
“What we learned from doing this study is that despite hesitations around using AI, both consumers and businesses do think it’s changing customer service for the better,” said Ryan Lester, Director of Customer Engagement Technologies at LogMeIn. “While customers, for the most part, have come to accept that their interactions with brands will be involved and time consuming, their expectations are increasing as new technologies become more commonplace. Companies have a unique opportunity to leverage these new advancements -- like chatbots -- to provide a leg-up on the competition and set the bar for all others in their industry and beyond.”
Additional Resources:
LogMeIn’s Customer Engagement & Support Portfolio
LogMeIn delivers industry leading solutions designed to empower companies to deliver smarter, more personalized customer engagement and support. Supporting over 200 million customer interactions every year, LogMeIn is helping companies transform how they interact with their customers in real-time, creating experiences that drive increased satisfaction and brand loyalty.
About LogMeIn, Inc.
LogMeIn, Inc. (Nasdaq:LOGM) simplifies how people connect with each other and the world around them to drive meaningful interactions, deepen relationships, and create better outcomes for individuals and businesses. One of the world’s top 10 public SaaS companies, and a market leader in communication & conferencing, identity & access, and customer engagement & support solutions, LogMeIn has millions of customers spanning virtually every country across the globe. LogMeIn is headquartered in Boston with additional locations in North America, South America, Europe, Asia and Australia.
Media contact:
Alison Parker
press@logmein.com
781-850-1261