Retailers are taking an average of nearly two days to answer customer queries via email but just four hours over Twitter, according to a new study which still shows they only answer just over half (55%) of routine queries at all.
According to the 2015 Eptica Multichannel Customer Experience Study, email performance has worsened considerably in retail since 2014, both in accuracy and speed of response, while Twitter has improved dramatically over the last 12 months.
The average time taken to answer questions sent by email has increased by over 8 hours to 43 hours 52 minutes between 2014 and 2015, while the percentage of retailers successfully answering a query sent via email dropped from 63% to 58%.
In contrast, tweets were answered in an average of 4 hours 5 minutes, over twice as fast as 2014’s 13 hours 10 minutes. Only 43% of tweets received a successful reply, however, although this was 10% higher than 2014. The web remains the strongest channel for customer service in retail, with 65% of answers to queries being found on company websites.
The Eptica Study evaluated 40 leading UK retailers, split between four sectors (food & wine, consumer electronics, entertainment and fashion). Repeating research carried out since 2011, it replicated consumer behaviour by measuring retailers on their ability to provide answers to ten routine questions via the web as well as their speed and accuracy when responding to email, Twitter and web chat.
In terms of sectors, entertainment retailers fared the worst with a score of 33%, followed by food and wine retailers, and fashion retailers, both on 60%. The top performers were consumer electronics retailers on 67%.
As well as retailers, Eptica also evaluated businesses in six other sectors (banking, utilities, telecoms, electronics manufacturers, travel companies and insurers). Retail consistently outscored the overall average of all ten sectors on the email, Twitter and web channels. Across the entire study only 39% of emails were answered successfully, compared to 58% by retailers, with accurate Twitter responses for the four retail sectors (43%) 2% higher than the overall average of 41%.
“With ecommerce sales breaking the £100bn mark in 2014, digital channels are now central to the success of retailers, whatever sector they are in,” said Julian Sammells, sales director UK & Ireland, Eptica. “Unfortunately the study found there has been little improvement in how retailers are performing compared to 2014, with a major drop in email speed and wider gaps between best and worst. Retailers need to evaluate how they are performing for digital customer service and invest accordingly to ensure they are ready for the future demands of Christmas 2015.”
