Average time to resolve problems is three times higher than customers want

Businesses seem to be setting the bar for "good" customer service too low, according to a recent study, which could have significant business impact as the customer experience becomes even more vital as customers decide to buy.

Boston, Mass.- based identity and access company LogMeIn recently released a study to analyze the business impact and consumer attitudes of today's customers and their journey to a sale.

It surveyed over 5,000 respondents consisting of business leaders and consumers around the globe.

Its 2018 AI Customer Experience study shows that over one-third of consumers were not impressed with their customer journey.

Also: Are you there, chatbot? It's me, human CNET

Over four out of five (83 percent) of consumers citied an average or poor experience, saying that they had at least one issue while interacting with a brand.

Conversely, 80 percent of businesses believe their customers would give them a favorable review -- even whilst admitting that less than half of customer queries are resolved during the first interaction.

Two-thirds (68 percent) of business respondents agree that their agents struggle with the volume of customer enquiries, and 61 percent of consumers feel that it takes too long for an enquiry to be resolved,

Around 61 percent of businesses say they are investing in customer experience solutions, and will allocate more budget to new solutions specifically designed for customer engagement over the next 12 months.

Furthermore, 35 percent of businesses say they have already invested in emerging technologies such as AI. A further 53 percent said that they are planning to invest. Over 70 percent of consumers want brands to leverage technology to reduce time to resolution.

Both business and consumer respondents agree that telephone and email are among the most common channels used to conduct business. However, they also tend to produce the slowest time to resolution.

The average time to resolution was 11 hours -- almost three times higher than the wait time cited as being acceptable. Telephone interactions tend to be resolved in 7 hours, and email is 18 hours.

Only one in three (32 percent) of consumers believe they get the best results when interacting with a brand when an AI-powered chatbot is involved in some capacity.

Also: 5 chatbots transforming work around the world TechRepublic

Although some consumers are skeptical about chatbots, three out of four (74 percent) see the benefits of chatbots for customer service.

Ryan Lester, director of Customer Engagement Technologies at LogMeIn, said:

"While customers, for the most part, have come to accept that their interactions with brands will be involved and time consuming, their expectations are increasing as new technologies become more commonplace.

Companies have a unique opportunity to leverage these new advancements -- like chatbots -- to provide a leg-up on the competition and set the bar for all others in their industry and beyond."

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