64% of respondents believe that the more sophisticated the technology implementations at call centres the greater the likelihood of transfer to the wrong department or becoming lost in a maze of automated response systems. Whilst long wait times and overseas call centres still dominate customer service woes of 63% of those polled, 44% do not think companies are doing enough to maintain a minimum level of customer call centre support.
"Avaya's survey findings are indicative of the urgent need for change in contact centre support services," said Jane Brett, director Applications, Avaya, UK. "Our findings highlight that human latency and inadequately managed call centre infrastructure as well as through legacy and acquired technology integration challenges are resulting in immense loss of business."
Maria, 42, a teaching assistant from Kendal says, "I once called a company and they said I was 90th in the queue. I held on for about an hour and then when I got to number two they cut me off." While Peter 39, a paint sprayer from South Shields found that the easiest and quickest way to get through customer support is to tell the automated response system that you're making a purchase.
"Today's business success is less determined by what businesses sell and more and more by end user customer's experience with those businesses" said Brett.
"At Avaya, we believe that companies can both serve their customers efficiently as well as growing their revenues through a strategy of using Intelligent Communications. By adopting the right applications, contact centres can significantly improve support services and drastically reduce queue time, improving problem escalation and intelligently routing calls through presence solutions that do not require human intervention," concluded Brett.