Global customer satisfaction in the second quarter increased 3%, to 81%, compared with the first quarter according to the “Zendesk Benchmark Q2 2013 In Focus: Customer Self-Service” report.
According to the report, the increase is due to a change in consumer and business trends. Along with the customer being more satisfied with businesses, industries that had a low customer satisfaction rate -- such as finance and insurance -- grew the most in this area. Those two industries experienced about a 6% increase, ending the second quarter with a 77% satisfaction rate. Consumers also have more faith in the economy than they had in previous years, the report found.
The report compares actual support performance results from 16,000 companies in 125 countries and highlights the following areas: how customer satisfaction has improved by country and industry, customer self-service, and mobile trends in the self-service sector.
While financial and insurance are near the bottom of the customer satisfaction list, education is at the top at 95%, followed by IT services and consultancy, real-estate, government and non-profit, and web hosting. The bottom two industries were media and telecommunications at 73%, followed by social media at 64%.
Customer satisfaction-wise, New Zealand finished as the top country at 92% -- followed by Canada, Australia, Norway, and Denmark. The report also notes that despite being in the bottom two, South Africa and the United Arab Emirates do have something to be proud of: South Africa jumped from a 44% to a 60% customer satisfaction rate since the last quarter and the United Arab Emirates saw an increase of 5% to finish at 58%.
The report found that customer self-service is now at 67%, while 91% of respondents said they would use a company’s ‘knowledge base' -- such as frequently asked questions and how-to videos -- if they were available to them and could meet their needs.
Two major trends emerged from the report: The first is that consumers look to find a solution to their problems on their own or rely on online communities -- such as message boards – before calling a help-line or customer service center. The second trend is that more companies are realizing that self-service is a good move for both the customer and its business because it can lower support costs and makes resources more available to high-value customers.
Customers are also using mobile devices more often. The use of mobile devices has increased 50% in the past year, with 26% of self-serve customers from the polled industries using these devices.
The report found that customers in the media and telecommunications field use mobile devices more, followed closely by social media.