The customer service Black Friday shoppers expect

As consumers, we want to interact with companies in ways that are painless, quick and effective. More than ever, we want to be able to find answers to queries and resolve our complaints instantly - and on whatever device we have to hand.

According to recent research from Esendex, more than half of us get frustrated if we wait for more than five hours for a response from customer service, highlighting the demand for round-the-clock customer service.

Though some of us (1 in 3) are happy to wait longer than this – our patience runs out if we have to wait for more than 24 hours.

We’re also intolerant if we have a bad experience, with 85% of consumers saying we’d give a business no more than two chances before we ‘switch’ and move to a competitor.

Chris Gorman, Head of Professional Services at Esendex, comments: “We wanted to look at what customers are expecting in terms of service and support. Our research highlights a shift in customer expectations and communication preferences, and a growing intolerance of being kept waiting.

“Customers now expect the convenience of two-way conversational messaging and self-serve. It seems we are happy to use SMS, chatbots, AI, speech recognition, touch tone, web FAQs and forums if we can get quicker answers to our questions.

“Luckily these powerful mobile and automation tools are quick to implement and can be extremely cost-effective.

“When businesses are competing so closely in terms of price, particularly around Black Friday and Cyber Monday, it may well be the quality of customer service that tips the balance in favour of a particular product and brand.”