Speed Counts for Online Customer Service

In a new survey, sponsored by Rye, NY-based Mobius Management Systems, nearly 75 percent of a representative sample of 200 online consumers said that reliable and fast customer service was key to their decision in selecting a consumer services provider, such as a credit card issuer, mortgage lender or wireless communication vendor.

Ninety-one percent said they would change vendors if it took them consistently longer than ten minutes to connect to a live customer service representative. In spite of this overwhelming focus on customer service, only half of the respondents said they'd spend more money for superior customer service.

"The explosion in retail and business-to-business electronic commerce where human contact has diminished has raised everyone's sensitivity to customer service - fast customer service," said Mitchell Gross, president and CEO of Mobius Management Systems, a provider of Web-based software that supports customer service operations. "Companies are losing customers over how fast they can respond to them. And once lost, these customers aren't coming back."

Speed, the survey found, is a key component of quality customer service. Fully 86 percent of respondents said they'd been forced to wait on hold longer than ten minutes to speak with a customer service representative, but this is an experience they are not likely to repeat.

Less than a third of respondents said they would hold for longer than ten minutes going forward, and this, coupled with the 91 percent who said they'd change vendors if the wait was consistently that long, has struck fear into the hearts of customer relationship managers.

One of the key changes these customer attitudes are causing in consumer services companies is a dramatic shift in how vendors approach customer service and customer relationship management. Many are implementing software and data archiving systems to help customer service reps instantly access customer information and respond to an inquiry on a single call. Some are now moving to customer self-service via the Internet, making information about customer accounts and transactions available to the customer at any time.

"Our business is changing as consumer attitudes change," said Gross. "Whereas our key corporate customers historically were looking for internal efficiencies and cost reductions by using our software, they are now almost universally focused on customer service, frequently by offering Web-based self-service. In an environment in which instant response is crucial to keeping consumers happy, it's a natural evolution."

The final finding of the survey was that 64 percent of the survey respondents said that they would favor Web-based customer self-service to phone service.