Thursday, September 23, 2010

79% of Consumers Have Experienced Poor Voice Quality with Call Centers Costing Organizations Billions Globally

According to a recent survey undertaken by the Customer Experience Foundation on behalf of Empirix Inc., seventy-nine percent of consumers have experienced poor voice quality. The study asked 3,925 consumers about their experiences in dealing with contact centers and identified technology related trends and common problems that are affecting customer service and costing organizations around the world billions of dollars.

The high percentage of global consumers that highlighted poor voice quality as a common problem points to a real issue in the industry. The study also revealed that poor voice quality drives down sales volumes, increases call lengths and the number of calls that are forced to be redialed. And as a result, churn rates can increase for both customers and staff. The magnitude of the problem is indicative of how much businesses are struggling to come to terms with this issue, while consumers are quickly losing patience.

Other key survey findings include:

-- Consumers say that forty two percent of all call center calls are impacted by poor voice quality.

-- Thirty percent of consumers who experienced poor voice quality said that it happened in more than half of their calls, with 68 percent of those saying that they would usually hang up as a result, and if they were calling about a new product or service would call a competing company instead.

-- Twenty-six percent of consumers say they need to redial to complete a transaction.

-- Only 1 in 6 companies said they used specialist tools to manage voice quality, so it is no surprise that 72 percent of the businesses polled said they had frequent voice quality issues for which they could not identify the root causes.

-- "Stress" is the most commonly used word when consumers were asked to explain how they felt after a poor voice quality call was completed.

-- Case studies show that consumers are often forced to repeat themselves on calls as a result of poor voice quality.

More info can be found at www.SupportIndustry.com

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