Phone contact best for customer experience according to research

Webchat, SMS and social media messaging are popular ways for customers to contact brands – but new research by Ultracomms reveals how consumers feel about contact centres and confirms they still want to pick up the phone when they have a problem.

The contact centre specialist surveyed 1,000 consumers on their experience of interacting with brands. Customers said that given the choice, they prefer to use the phone when they need information (35%), assistance with an issue (43%) or to make a complaint (39%).

The Ultracomms report – It’s still good to talk: Consumer contact centre experiences in the age of the GDPR – also highlighted concerns around consent to contact customers, with 66% of those who were contacted by a brand stating that they had not given their consent for the contact to take place.

When it comes to being contacted, the research revealed that consumers are more open to outbound campaigns through less intrusive channels such as SMS. Just over a quarter (26%) of respondents who were contacted by text message were pleased they had been contacted and felt the contact was helpful/useful/beneficial. This compares to 6% of respondents who were contacted by landline.

Derwyn Jones, CEO at Ultracomms, said “These findings should prompt businesses to think very carefully about the need to understand consumer behaviour and how people prefer to be contacted. The research shows that customers are still open to being contacted, but it is important brands use the appropriate channels for the job, embracing platforms such as webchat, SMS and email appropriately. As AI facilitates more self-service experiences, the key is to know when that contact needs to become a human interaction.”

Despite strong public awareness around GDPR regulations, 45% of respondents who gave their payment card details either weren’t confident or didn’t consider whether their card details would be stored safely – 71% of these gave their details to a person over the phone.

Of this group, only 3% were aware that using secure payment technology is the safest method of providing payment details over the phone.