Understanding Customer Preferences to Create a Better Customer Experience

Delivering quality customer experience is the best way when trying to set your business apart from competitors in your market space. In 2017, Gartner released a survey that showed 81% of companies were expecting to compete just on the quality of their customer experience. To do that, you must be equipped to reach customers through various communications. This is a necessary step when providing deliverables to your customers.

Currently, there is a lot of commotion around organizations using their social media profile to connect with customers. Although this is beneficial, many companies are still seeing perks by talking to customers directly, over the phone.

Uncovering the Results

Voxbone released results from a recent survey done on how consumers preferred to be contacted by a business. With over 1,000 responses to their survey, they were able to assess the results by breaking them down by regions of the country as well as different age groups. Overall, the results showed about two-thirds of consumers prefer picking up the phone to receiving text messages when it comes to communicating with businesses.

Preferences by Age

A prominent key finding from this survey was how the younger generations seemed more adapt to buying when they heard from a brand over the phone than over text messaging. The survey showed that both millennials and Generation Z prefer to be contacted with a phone call almost 4x more than Generation X. The younger generation is also nearly 40% more likely to answer calls over any other age group. When it came to Baby Boomers, they were around 54.5% and Generation X was at around 16%.

Preferences by Region

The survey showed that references not only varied by age, but also varied by region. It is important for businesses building their business communication strategy to be aware of how different areas of the country like to be communicated with. Does your current contact strategy take the following into account?

In the United States, the further west you travel, the more consumers were partial to receiving communication over text messages, with 83%. As you move towards back towards the east, the New England and West South-Central region consumers favored phone calls 71% and 75%, respectively.

What the numbers say

These statistics show the importance of improving your business’ phone outreach efforts in order to stand out from your competitors. 62% of companies have seen an abundance amount of improvement in their contact center outreach when going up against competitors. By including personalized phone calls or text messages, it can help improve your contact center’s chances of getting through to customers.

With direct communication being the leader in how the younger generation prefers to be contacted, your business can’t afford for it to be neglected. Although social media and chatbots seem like the best strategy for getting in touch with the younger generation, it is clear that your customer experience strategy should be done through phone calls and text messages.

Leveraging Customer Preferences

On average, a consumer receives 22.5 phone calls from unknown numbers per week and 64% of those come from a different area code. Which means that only 36% of those phone calls were from business with local numbers.

The more local you can get a phone number, the higher the engagement and chance that the consumer will pick up the phone. The Voxbone survey revealed that two-thirds of respondents were more likely to answer calls if they had the same area code. By using local numbers, your company can build trust amongst all age groups with millennials and Generation Z leading the pack.

42% of consumers are likely to respond to a text message from a phone number that they have previously talked to. After speaking with a consumer over the phone, they are more adept to receiving text messages from businesses.

The Importance of Getting It Right

Using local numbers during your initial outreach will help businesses increase their chances of improving customer experience. By doing so, the odds of reaching a customer directly increase by engaging with them on a personal level. Delivering a quality customer experience can improve a customer’s loyalty by 90%.

Not providing quality customer service to customers can be extremely detrimental to an organization. Research shows that two-thirds of customers will stop buying from a company if they have a bad customer experience. Because of this, it is important for companies to know how consumers like to be communicated with.

For business strategies to be successful, taking the time to fully understand your customers’ preferences will have a big impact. There is something to be said for companies that are known for providing quality customer experience and maintaining customer loyalty.