In a follow-up to our blog post last month, Communications Trend: Consumers as Marketers—how can we, as communications professionals, get consumers to support our brands, as marketers?
A recent survey, commissioned by Redwood Software and discussed on Bulldog Reporter last week, offers one place to start. The survey found that consumers are deterred from brands when faced with “shoddy customer service, redundant questions, disconnected processes and long waits,” that it’s really the “little-big problems—the things that may seem inconsequential up front, but build up overtime to dramatically change the relationship a customer has with a one-favorite brand.”
The specific revelations included:
- “Nearly half of potential buyers terminate online purchases because they take too long (49.35%) or are too complicated (48.35%).”
- “More than 75% of shoppers leave brick-and-mortar stores—and 65.3% leave online marketplaces—because they couldn’t find what they wanted.”
- “Ultimately, 51% of the U.S. consumers surveyed have ended contracts or changed suppliers because of continued service failings.”
- “Customer service also came under fire in the survey. More than 61% of respondents reported dissatisfaction at having to repeat personal information to an operator after providing that information through an automated telephone system, and 58.85% were similarly annoyed when repeating information to multiple people or departments across transfers.”
After reading these survey findings, it seems that in order to secure consumers on our side as marketers we must continue to pay special attention to the ‘little’ details such as: making web pages and social media profiles easy to navigate and ensuring all brand messages are consistent across all communication platforms. After all, these are some of our key tasks as PR pros.
Bulldog Reporter explains that “consumer expectations are high, but so is the potential loss for big brands, with these annoyances undoubtedly translating into lost revenue.”