Following a year of decline customer satisfaction is on the rise again.
The latest Zendesk Benchmark report reveals that the average customer satisfaction rating increased by 3 percentage points from the prior quarter to 81 percent.
This is the highest level that consumer satisfaction ratings have been since the first quarter of last year, and the increase is largely because of industries with poor ratings climbing back up again, such as financial and insurance services.
Lead researcher for the Zendesk Benchmark and vice president of products at Zendesk, Sam Boonin, said:
“Companies in most industries throughout the world are seeing gains in customer satisfaction right when consumers are ready to spend more.”
Zendesk is a provider of software which is able to track customer satisfaction as well as service trends. Currently there are more than 16,000 companies that participate with them.
Despite customer satisfaction increasing to 82 percent in the U.S. it didn’t reach the top 10 countries – Canada (No. 2), Russia (No. 9) and Mexico (No. 10) were ahead.
New Zealand was number one with 92 percent customer satisfaction (10 percentage points higher than the U.S.).
Customer Satisfaction by Country
Top Countries:
- New Zealand: 92 percent (-1 percent increase from Q1)
- Canada: 91 percent (+4 percent increase from Q1)
- Australia: 89 percent (+4 percent increase from Q1)
Worst countries:
- United Arab Emirates: 58 percent (+5 percent increase from Q1)
- South Africa: 60 percent (+16 percent increase from Q1)
- Turkey: 68 percent (+3 percent increase from Q1)
Satisfaction by industry
Top Industries:
- Eduction: 95 percent (no change from Q1)
- IT Services and Consultancy: 95 percent (-1 percent decrease from Q1)
- Real Estate: 94 percent (no change)
Worst Industries:
- Social Media: 64 percent (+2 percent increase from Q1)
- Media and Telecommunications: 73 percent (no change)
- Entertainment and Gaming: 76 percent (+4 percent increase)
Customer Seek Self Service
The Zendesk Benchmark report also examined trends in customer self service – a new metric was developed, called the Self-Service Score which represents the number of people using self-service tools for every request for support. Currently, one quarter of people who help themselves with forums or communities are submitting a request – a score of 4.1.
In addition, it appears that people are switching to mobile devices to seek help. Over the past 12 months, the number of people who use self-service content on their mobiles has increased by 50 percent.
Boonin said:
“The mobile consumer expects to find information with just a few swipes of a touch screen. Companies are moving quickly to offer customer self service that’s just as good on a four-inch screen as it is on a big screen.”
Industries with the highest mobile self-service usage are media (84 percent) and social media (57 percent). The industries with the lowest mobile usage for self-service are education (10 percent) and finance and insurance services (11 percent).
The full report is available here.