Cavell’s 2024 Voice of the Consumer Report surveyed over 1,000 adults across the UK, with the findings revealing that close to half (44 per cent) of consumers think the quality of customer service is worse now than three years ago.
Additionally, over a third (35 per cent) of adults in the UK feel that chatbots and automated systems are bad at customer service. As a result, half of UK consumers feel that speaking to a human is still the fastest and best way to resolve a customer service issue and receive a positive outcome.
Finbarr Begley, senior analyst, Cavell, commented, “Consumers are growing increasingly frustrated with customer service. Automated systems are seen as the solution but the huge differences in quality across systems like chatbots result in consumers getting more frustrated than helped. Expectations on the technology are soaring, fuelled by the AI narratives in the media, but the reality isn’t there yet.”
The research also revealed that over three quarters (79 per cent) of UK adults prefer to receive customer service from someone located in their own country. In addition, 45 per cent of consumers have ignored an issue with a product or service because they would have had to interact with customer service. More than a third of UK adults would pay for a ‘premium’ customer service add-on featuring benefits such as prioritised response, personalised service and a dedicated point of contact.
Begley added, “Added to the growth in consumer expectations on customer service, is the increased focus on deflection techniques to try and get consumers to self-solve issues. This is being done to reduce customer service costs but also means that consumers cannot easily reach a human agent even when they know they need to. This will continue to ease over the next few years as automated systems improve, and companies continue to add more methods of contacting them to their platforms.”