Both consumer and business customers rely heavily on Web self-service when they have a problem. Recent surveys of customers engaged in self-service activities have surfaced some interesting results. Here are a few highlights:

• Many customers have more than 11 different logins and passwords.
• Many customers change these frequently.
• Yet many other customers use the same ones for all their accounts.
• Customers will spend between 10 and 30 minutes trying to solve a problem or answer a question using self-service tools before they’ll call a person for help.
• Many customer service emails are not answered at all or take days to get an answer.
• 10% of Twitter queries are answered within an hour.
• Two-thirds of U.S. consumers have made a complaint in the last 3 years. Most people make six complaints per year and spend over an hour resolving each one.
• Two-thirds of U.S. consumers have had to repeat their “stories” over and over again when trying to solve a problem with customer service via the phone.

What’s the bottom line? Customers want to use self-service tools. Don’t make them log in to use them. Provide virtual assistants and other streamlined tools to help customers solve their problems. Don’t EVER ask a customer to repeat his/her story!

Read Mitch Kramer’s summary of recent customer service surveys:

Patterns from Customer Service Suppliers’ VOC
Customer Survey Results from KANA and Nuance about Customer Service Experiences
By Mitch Kramer, Senior Consultant, Patricia Seybold Group, March 14, 2014