The banking industry features in the top three UK sectors that are offering ‘good’ customer service – but it could be better!

Today’s consumers are increasingly accustomed to swift query response, across multiple channels and according to recent research the majority of sectors in the UK are falling well short of providing ‘excellent’ contactability to their customers and prospects, however, the banking industry places in the top three.

The research commissioned by Yonder Digital Group canvassed 2,000 UK consumers, asking whether they felt that companies in a range of sectors were easy to get in touch with and efficient at getting queries resolved rapidly and effectively. Even though the banking industry featured in the top three, the research results show that this sector still has a lot of space for improvement.

It emerged that banking firms are the best of a bad bunch with 34% of consumers rating the ease of contact standard as ‘good’ but only 24% as excellent and 15% as poor.  This is a particularly worrying result considering that previous Yonder research showed that 81% of consumers simply take their business elsewhere if their queries aren’t answered quickly and effectively by a company. For this reason it’s risky for the banking sector to continue overlooking their levels of ‘contactability’.

SECTOR	Ease of Contact standard
	Excellent	Good	Basic	Poor
Online-only retailers	25%	33%	28%	15%
Banks	24%	34%	28%	15%
Hotels	23%	37%	31%	10%
Supermarkets	19%	34%	33%	13%
Mobile phone companies	17%	33%	33%	17%
Utility companies	17%	33%	32%	19%
Internet providers	16%	31%	34%	19%
Insurance companies	16%	32%	37%	16%
DIY stores	13%	29%	42%	16%
Fashion shops	12%	29%	41%	19%
Car brands	11%	24%	46%	19%
Delivery firms	10%	27%	39%	24%
Airlines	10%	26%	41%	23%

 

Chris Robinson, Yonder Digital Group CEO, comments, “Customers have individual preferences for contacting companies, which is why businesses lose out when they don’t offer a range of touch points. At crucial moments in the journey to purchase, many customers will look for a live agent, particularly for urgent or non-standard queries. Businesses that fail to provide support at these critical stages risk losing customers to competitors with superior support services. As the results show, a large proportion of companies are still falling well below the mark, suggesting there is a long way to go for UK industries to catch up with modern expectations.”