Account Service

56% of UK consumers say they would never use a company again if faced with a negative customer service experience, according to survey results from NewVoiceMedia. Beyond taking their business elsewhere, 29% would tell their friends and peers about their bad experience, while 19% would post a review online and 14% would complain on social media. Much as they'd punish companies for a bad service experience, though, these consumers would reward them for a positive one. 74% of respondents said a positive customer experience would lead them to be more loyal, and 71% would recommend the company to others. Read more »

Bad customer service experiences are more likely to be shared than good ones, according to results from a ZenDesk-sponsored survey conducted by Dimensional Research. Separate results from the survey [pdf] indicate that not only are bad service experiences shared often, they're also likely to have a long-term impact on customers. Respondents were asked to think about experiences with mid-sized B2B or B2C companies whose good or bad customer service impacted their behavior. Fully 39% of respondents who had a bad experience said their behavior was impacted for at least 2 years after the negative experience. Read more »

Better make that first impression a good one. 56% of consumers believe that the first purchase or beginning of service is the deciding moment in establishing brand loyalty, according to results from the second brand loyalty survey conducted by ClickFox. In last year's survey, when asked the most critical time for a company to gain their loyalty, 48% of the consumers surveyed said it's when they make their first purchase or begin service, while just 1% said it's when they're considering switching to a competitor. Read more »

Good - and bad - customer service interactions affect brand loyalty, according to [pdf] results from a survey of more than 1,000 individuals who have had experiences with the customer service of a mid-sized company. The survey, conducted by Dimensional Research and sponsored by ZenDesk, found that 62% of B2B and 42% of B2C customers purchased more after a good experience, while 66% and 52% respectively stopped making purchases after a bad experience. Companies beware: respondents reported being more likely to share bad than good experiences. Read more »

There's some friction between marketing and sales departments when it comes to the sales tools (such as collateral, ROI calculators, proposal content) used to win new customers, according to a new survey from KnowledgeTree. The survey uncovered significant gaps in perception between both parties, with 87% of marketers believing they provide the right set of tools to salespeople, but only two-thirds of salespeople agreeing. Read more »

While most marketers are collecting outside customer data for their campaigns, many are not seamlessly integrating their data, causing them to miss out on audience insights that would better inform their loyalty efforts, according to [download page] a new report from Loyalty360 and Acxiom. For example, while 68% of survey respondents (the majority of whom are involved in audience measurement) gather outside customer data, 53% do not append or integrate 3rd party data into customer relationship management efforts. Read more »

Customer service channels are evolving, but 89% of consumers believe it's important to be able to communicate with brands on any channel and still receive the same quality and efficiency of response, per results from a LiveOps study conducted by Harris Interactive. That means that brands need to step up their social customer service efforts, particularly when it comes to speed of response: previous research has shown a big gap in response times between phone calls and social media. Read more »

The number of Interbrand 100 brands with a dedicated customer service handle on Twitter has grown from 23 on December 1, 2012 to 30 on March 1, 2013, according to a report from Simply Measured. But while that's a positive trend, brands are still missing the mark when it comes to response rates: the average response rate to all customer service mentions during the analyzed 3-month period was 42%, per the study findings, supporting Socialbakers data showing similarly low rates. Read more »

Marketers rank strategic insights as their most important criterion when reviewing new agencies, according to results from an RSW/US survey, placing more emphasis on an agency's strategic capabilities than on its creative ideas, chemistry, and cost. The RSW/US survey is one of several to share that result (see here and here for examples). It also finds that marketers' top criteria line up with how agencies believe they should be evaluated. Read more »

About 3 in 4 marketers think that it's somewhat (47%) or very (31%) important that the agency they hire specializes in their industry, per survey results [download page] from RSW/US. Luckily for agencies, though, the threshold for being considered an industry specialist is not too demanding. That is, roughly 6 in 10 marketers surveyed believe that an agency need only have 50% or less of their business focused on an industry in order to be considered a specialist. Read more »