The Age Of The Self-Service Customer Experience

By Matt Pillar, chief editor

A few recent surveys conducted by Forrester collectively reveal just how important digital self-service tools are for retailers seeking to offer customer service excellence. They also reveal the demise of in-store retail customer service.

The first report, Forrester’s 2014 Business Technographics Global Priorities And Journey survey, gives us some context on the collective corporate perception of customer service importance. When Forrester asked nearly 3,000 U.S. business decision makers about their top priorities in 2015, revenue growth (78 percent) and customer experience improvement (73 percent) were far-and-away the top two responses, followed by cost control at a distant 60 percent.

Having ascertained the importance of the customer experience in B2C success,  who’s doing it well? The second Forrester report, its 2014 North American Consumer Customer Experience Index, indicates that online retailers with a variety of self-service tools for consumer engagement are leading the league in customer satisfaction. Forrester surveyed consumers on 299 B2C brands representing a variety of industries, from banking and finance to automotive and retail. Six of the top 15 brands were digital-only retailers: QVC, Amazon, Newegg, Zappos, Etsy and HSN. No brick-and-mortar retailer (or cross-channel retailer, for that matter) cracked the top 15.

Please log in or register below to read the full article.