Updated April 22, 2024
No matter what industry you’re in, chances are you probably have at least a few competitors — competitors who are fighting for the same customers you’re trying to get. Businesses are striving for excellence in every area possible so they can stand out amongst their competition.
Staying up-to-date on 2024’s updated customer service statistics can help you understand how much attention to focus on customer service and how to create a customer service strategy that makes a big impact on your bottom line.
Customer Service in 2024
Want to make a lasting impression on your customers? Focus your attention on customer service by creating innovative ways to reach out to your customers with text promotions, helpful information, and important reminders.
Plus, make sure you’re reading the research that shows how consumers prefer to be contacted by brands these days. Your delivery channel is just as important as your content. The best brands are mixing in all sorts of communication channels to stay in touch. From basic phone calls and emails to social media and sending mass texts, it’s important to understand how to effectively reach your customers and maintain a healthy relationship.
This infographic shows you everything you need to know about statistics on customer service in 2024 and how mass texting can help your support strategy.
Customer Service Infographic in Review
- 42% of employees are unable to efficiently resolve customer issues due to broken processes or disconnected systems.
- 89% of consumers have stopped doing business with a company after experiencing poor customer service.
- Consumers are twice as likely to share their bad customer service experiences than they are to talk about positive experiences.
- A customer is four times more likely to buy from a competitor if the problem is service-related versus price or product-related.
- It takes 12 positive customer experiences to make up for one negative experience.
- 70% of buying experiences are based on how the customer feels they’re being treated.
- 55% of consumers would pay more for a better customer experience.
- 83% of consumers require some degree of customer support while making an online purchase.
- A 10% increase in customer retention levels results in a 30% increase in the value of a company.
- A dissatisfied customer will tell between 9 and 15 people about their experience.
- The top ten consumer-ranked elements of a great online experience include
- 82%: Getting my issue resolved quickly
- 56%: Getting my issue resolved in a single interaction
- 45%: Dealing with a friendly customer service representative
- 37%: Being able to follow up with the same person if necessary
- 28%: Being able to record, print, and/or save a copy of the interaction with the brand
- 27%: Having a follow-up after the inquiry to ensure satisfaction
- 27%: Providing me with customized offers
- 21%: Being able to do other things while my issue is resolved
- 17%: Not having to speak to someone
- 17%: Having a personalized experience
- Customer service experience based on company size:
- 35.9% of large companies miss customer expectations, but only 5.7% of small companies miss customer expectations.
- 60.9% of large customers meet customer expectations, while that number is 56.3% for small businesses.
- Only 3.2% of large businesses exceed customer expectations, while 38% of small businesses do so.
How To Improve Your Customer Service with SMS
Statistics on customer service clearly show just how vital a good experience is to the success (and profit) of your business. With SMS, you can get more out of your customer service while putting in minimal time and money — especially if you take advantage of marketing automation workflows. Even if you don’t use texting automation, you can use SMS to respond one-on-one to any incoming customer requests.
With our customer service infographic in mind, here are some steps if you’re considering adding texting to your customer service efforts.
Set Clear Communication Standards
Texting is a very personal method of communication. It’s how people stay in touch with those closest to them, at all times of the day. If you use SMS to communicate with customers, they may expect responses during hours when you’re not in operation. Make sure to outline the exact timeframe when your team is available to respond so you can prevent any customer frustration. You can even use a tool like ChatGPT to write out your automated responses with AI texts.
Make Your Customer Service Simple
Put yourself in your customer’s shoes. What are the common questions they might have? How easy is it to use your product? If they want to return something, what’s the process like? If something breaks, will customer service know how to fix it? Walk through what you think a customer’s main questions and concerns might be, then train your team to respond to them.
You can even set up an automated workflow that sends customers to specific help articles for common, easy-to-fix problems. Automating your customer service texts can save you time and money, and you can send people directly to a representative if their question isn’t answered.
Personalize the Experience
The last thing you want to do is make your customers feel like just another ticket to process. Even if you’re automating your customer service, you can still include personal information to make them feel heard and valued. Using merge tags, you can insert customer data that you’ve collected — like names, locations, and order dates — into your messages.
Take it a step further with segmentation, which allows you to sort your subscribers into groups based on criteria like zip codes, order value, preferred products, and more. If you have product updates, recalls, or anything in between, you can sort which customers the information is relevant to, and send text blasts to only them. You can even send text promotions to customers based on this info!
Request Feedback
What better way to find out how your customer service is doing than to ask your customers directly? With SMS marketing, you can send out short text surveys to collect feedback from past and current customers. Don’t send these out too often, as they may become an annoyance, but consider sending them after orders, support calls, or specific purchases. You can include questions or make it as simple as a thumbs up or thumbs down.
If you’re looking to collect reviews, you can even set up a workflow asking customers who gave positive feedback to post about their experience online.
Start Sending Messages with SlickText
Ready to improve your customer service experience with SMS? Get in touch with our team to learn more, and kick off your free trial today.