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One in five customers look for some form of compensation when making acomplaint, according to new research.
The Customer Service Benchmark from eDigitalResearch shows that when lodging a complaint, most customers would prefer a quick resolution or an apology over pay-outs or free products.
Of the 2,000 consumers surveyed, half (50 per cent) want an immediate resolution when complaining about a faulty product or bad service.
Analysis also found that the helpfulness of staff was very important to respondents who have made a complaint in the last six months, with over a third (40 per cent) of consumers valuing helpful staff over anything else.
Another one in four (25 per cent) said they value an apology regarding their complaint.
The news comes after Ofcom fined EE £1 million over complaints handling failures.
Ofcom’s investigation found that, over the period investigated – from July 22nd 2011 to April 8th 2014 – EE "did not provide certain customers with accurate or adequate information about their right to take their complaint to an alternative dispute resolution (ADR) scheme". Read more here.
The eDigitalResearch study also found that digital touch points rated much higher than traditional touch points. For example, when it comes to contacting companies, overall, users of live chat were much more satisfied – 73 per cent of whom said they were ‘satisfied’ or ‘extremely satisfied’ – than those using email, phone or post for their customer service queries.
One third (37 per cent) of those surveyed now expect to be able to contact a brand by live chat.
Derek Eccleston, Global Commercial Officer at eDigitalResearch, said: "The latest Customer Service Benchmark results suggest that the easier a company makes it for a customer to contact them and the quicker the issue is resolved, the more satisfied they are likely to be.
"Sympathising with your customers and offering an apology is more likely to increase customer satisfaction than offering some form of compensation."
eCustomerConnect from eDigitalResearch records the original complaint, and logs any actions and communications with both the customer and internal staff regarding the issue, including compensation against the response.
The full data can be found here: https://edigitalsurvey.com/survey/enter/s/ESV-544355374
Image source: Shutterstock
