Retail Customers’ Most Common – and Satisfying – Touch Points

January 8, 2014

ForeSee-How-Customers-Interact-With-Top-Retailers-Jan2014Aside from ranking top retailers by customer satisfaction, the latest ForeSee holiday retail report [download page] takes a look at the different ways in which customers interacted with the various retailers they purchased from. The results indicate that some newer touch points have yet to catch on much with consumers: respondents were more likely to have viewed a company’s catalog (17%) than to have interacted with the company via social media (3%), for example.

The survey (conducted between Thanksgiving and Christmas) asked respondents to identify all of the ways in which they personally interacted with the retailer in question during the previous 3 months. So it’s important to note that it does not necessarily reflect interactions during the holiday season, but might instead be a more accurate reflection of general interaction methods.

Nevertheless, for all the (mostly deserved) buzz about mobile’s influence this holiday season, the results show that customers were far less likely to have visited a particular retailer’s site from a mobile phone or tablet (12%) than from a desktop or laptop computer (46%). And while desktop e-commerce sales no doubt grew at a more rapid pace than overall retail sales, the most common way in which customers interacted with retailers in the run-up to the holidays was by visiting a store (59%).

ForeSee also measured customers’ satisfaction with their experiences across these different touch points. Although there wasn’t a wide range in satisfaction scores (which are based on a 100-point scale), the top-scoring interaction methods, each with a score of 85, were: visiting the company’s website from a desktop or laptop; viewing the company’s catalog; using the company’s mobile shopping application; and interacting with the company via social media. Customers appeared least satisfied with their call center experiences; still, the call center satisfaction score of 82 exceeded ForeSee’s threshold of excellence (80).

Interestingly, while consumers are almost certainly increasing their multichannel interactions with retailers, the ForeSee data indicates that a majority 57% of the top retailers’ customers were single-channel users. Of note, though, multichannel users registered a higher satisfaction score (85) with retailers on a company-level than single-channel users (82).

About the Data: The FXI: U.S. Retail Edition measures the customer experience with the biggest retailers in the United States, as reported by the Fortune 500, and is separated into five individual reports that focus on different retail touchpoints, including stores, Web, mobile experiences, contact centers and company-level satisfaction.

The list of measured retailers for the Contact Center Customer Experience Report is based on the biggest retailers in the Fortune 500 that had an active contact center. For the Contact Center Customer Experience Report, more than 7,700 surveys were collected via panel (a nationwide group of more than 1.3 million consumer households who have agreed to participate in opt-in surveys) between November 29, 2013, and December 17, 2013.

ForeSee surveyed only people who had contacted the company for customer service and support this holiday season (whether it was via online contact center, such as live support or Web chat, or a more traditional phone call center).

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