Customer service is a cornerstone of corporate strategies for better penetrating existing markets. Many organisations strive to exceed customers’ expectations for service. By providing an exceptional customer service experience, organisations believe they can create loyal customers for life. The problem is that for all the money, time and effort spent, most organisations are not very good at dazzling customer service.
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Create an Effortless Customer Service Experience
The key to customer loyalty is an effortless customer service experience.
In pursuit of customer loyalty
Exceeding expectations is the wrong goal
You create loyal customers by helping them solve their problems. However, customer service interactions are nearly four times more likely to lead to disloyalty than loyalty.
Do not try to drive customer loyalty by delighting customers — exceeding their expectations with above-and-beyond service. This strategy is difficult and costly; worse, it fails to deliver a proportionate increase in loyalty.
Insights you can use
We worked with over 125,000 B2B and B2C customers, 5,000 customer service
representatives and over 100 companies to understand what creates loyal customers. Instead of struggling to delight customers, create low-effort customer service experiences. An effortless customer service experience is the key to customer loyalty.
Customer effort is an excellent indicator of customer intent to repurchase and increase spending. To reduce customer effort, leading organisations measure customer effort, identify issues, prioritise customer service investments, create a low-effort environment, and manage self-service and multichannel service.
Reps who provide low-effort customer service experience
Our research shows there are seven distinct customer service rep profiles. One type is better at naturally providing a low-effort customer service experience. Find out what makes these seven profiles different and which one wins at providing low-effort service.
Make the shift from a live to a self-service-dominant function
Customer service leaders feel distinct pressure to meet customers’ expectations for digital service channels and keep pace with competitor’s service offerings. Learn how service leaders can improve the customer service experience while reducing live contact volume.
Customer Service and Support Leader Digest
Gartner created the Customer Service and Support Leader Digest for service leaders to have access to the latest insights, advice and tools you need to address your mission-critical priorities.
Improve digital and self-service effectiveness
Customer service and support leaders are tasked with reducing contact volumes rapidly during times of crisis. Gartner research identified tactics that service organisations can implement quickly to help lower operating costs without sacrificing the customer service experience.
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Testimonial
How do we help contact centres to drive performance?
Matthew Hurst, Senior Director, Client Services for DealerTrack DMS shares how Gartner for Customer Service and Support leaders helped Cox Auto to improve resolution rates within their contact centre while also driving down additional interactions and the number of inbound calls they received. Through his access to Gartner clients, Matthew was able to make significant culture changes within his contact centre, improve the client experience and receive the support he needed to lead his function with confidence.
Gartner topic experts
The Gartner Customer Service and Support team includes experts worldwide.
Mark Dauigoy
Senior Director, Advisory
Jim Davies
VP Analyst
Sarah Dibble
Senior Principal, Advisory
Simon Harrison
Senior Director Analyst
Olive Huang
VP Analyst
Nadine LeBlanc
Senior Director Analyst
Devin Poole
Senior Director, Advisory
Peter Slease
VP, Team Manager
Ed Thompson
Distinguished VP Analyst
Lauren Villeneuve
Senior Principal, Advisory
See the research
Smarter With Gartner
Gartner works with service and support leaders from over 400 organisations worldwide
This network enables us to deliver an unparalleled perspective on the trends, opportunities and best-practice solutions that are shaping customer service functions across regions and industries.