The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated digital transformation in many industries, bringing a new era for contact centres. Vonage discovered that the pandemic had changed customers’ preference for communicating with businesses: 51% still prefer to contact customer service via phone calls. Only 18% choose email to reach out, with 11% seeking other routes such as social media, letters and push notifications to contact a business.
However, the pandemic has also left contact centres in a difficult position, as according to IBIS World, there are currently 676 contact centres in the UK in 2022, a decline of -6.6% from 2021.
Interesting contact centre statistics in UK
The employment landscape has changed dramatically over the past two years, with hybrid and remote working becoming the backbone of the new working model. However, the safety measures introduced following the spread of the virus, among other regulations, have placed businesses, including contact centres across the UK, under immense pressure, leaving them close to a breaking point. This is reflected in the contact centres statistics concerning the UK in 2022:
One in five contact centre agents in the UK works in finance, an industry that’s responsible for nearly 18% of the entire workforce. (Source)
86% of contact centre leaders claim they cannot supply software updates fast enough to meet the increasing demand. (Source)
Only 60% of contact centres currently provide customer support via web chat. (Source)
59% of contact centre leaders agree that contact centre volumes are spiralling beyond their capabilities to control them. (Source)
67% of call centre owners say dealing with dissatisfied customers has impacted their employees’ mental health. (Source)
61% of contact centre leaders state the frequency has increased over the past year, a new global survey finds. (Source)
80% of customers claim they contacted a call centre last month. (Source)
42% of consumers are discouraged by rude or unhelpful customer service staff. (Source)
Regardless of channel, speed of response (89%), speed of resolution (89%), and friendliness of customer service staff (82%) are seen as the most important aspects of the customer service experience. (Source)
Once a company loses a customer’s trust, 68% of them won’t go back into business with them. (Source)
The contact centre market size, measured by revenue, will be worth £2.1 bn in 2022. (Source)
The market size of the UK call centre industry has declined by 1.8% per year on average between 2017 and 2022. (Source)
The self-service telephony system successfully handled 41% of inbound calls without human intervention. (Source)
30% of customers say that not being able to communicate with an actual human is the most frustrating part of a customer service experience. (Source)
80% of business clients believe anything less than five minutes to be a reasonable time to be on hold. (Source)
66% of customers use at least three communication channels to reach customer service. (Source)
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