| By :
Martin Hofschroer
European businesses should embrace technological developments in order to improve customer service. Research by Aspect revealed that young people are more likely to use social media websites such as Twitter and Facebook to post their complaints and queries about products and services so all firms should have a presence on these platforms. The software provider discovered that 36 per cent of European consumers chose to contact a company through telephone communication when they last had an issue with customer service. Over a third of those surveyed said they used an email in their most recent correspondence with a company, while just eight per cent decided to use traditional snail mail and seven per cent opted for online self-service platforms. Only five per cent of people used Facebook and Twitter for their last customer service query but those aged between 16-24 years old demonstrated greater willingness to use social media sites such as these. Overall, 56 per cent of respondents said that they used new media channels like email, text, social networking sites, smart-phone applications, live web chat, blogs and forums compared to just 44 per cent who used established channels. As a growing number of people become technologically savvy, firms will need to embrace the whole spectrum of new media channels in order to stay on top of their customer relationship management. Firms should not embrace new technology at the expense of traditional forms of communication as the evidence demonstrates that a decreasing fraction of people still use post to correspond with customers. Companies with an older consumer base should understand that their customers may be wary of the internet and will want to use traditional forms of communication such as the telephone and written letters. It is a difficult balancing act for firms to perform if they want their customer services to be accessible to both the technophobic and the new media savvy as disregarding one portion of your consumer base can be disastrous, especially for small businesses. Performance improvement consulting experts can help companies improve customer service but applying systems thinking business theory which enables them to examine what their consumer's value most when interacting with an organisation. The biggest majority of European customers value the 'secure handling of personal data' as the top requirement for good customer service, while a prompt response was the second most popular demand. The friendliness of the service representative was the third most sought after requirement in terms of customer service and applying systems thinking will allow an organisation to extract the most out of these consumer values.
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