MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA--(Marketwire - March 10, 2010) - eGain Communications Corporation (
eGain's 2010 State of Customer Service Study evaluated multiple aspects of web self-service and contact center customer service of 175 leading enterprises in the U.S. and Canada. These companies are equally distributed across eight sectors: financial services, retail, communications, consumer goods manufacturing, insurance, healthcare, and pharmaceuticals. The financial services sector included companies across banking, brokerage, asset management, and diversified financial services.
Analysts used a "mystery shopping" approach. Customer service was performance along multiple dimensions: choice of communication channels, email response, web self-service, cross-channel consistency, cross-agent consistency (phone channel) and phone customer service*. Scores in these metrics were then abstracted to an overall Service Quotient (SQ) on a scale of 0.0 to 4.0, for each of the companies that were assessed, as well as for each industry sector and the overall market.
The numeric scores map to the following ratings:
- Poor ( < 1.0)
- Below average ( > =1.0 and < 2.0)
- Above average ( > =2.0 and < 3.0)
- Exceptional (3.0 to 4.0)
2009-2010 Performance Comparison
- Overall performance of the sector improved slightly -- from 1.9 ("below average") in 2009 to 2.0 (barely "above average") in 2010.
- Email customer service received an "above average" rating of 2.5, a slight improvement from last year's score of 2.3.
- Web self-service and interaction choice both performed "below average," but improved with ratings of 1.7 and 1.9 (versus 1.3 and 1.6, respectively, in 2009).
- Multichannel experience took a deep dive, dropping from 1.9 to 1.1 this year. 2010 performance bordered on "poor" -- an area of concern as customer communication channels continue to proliferate.
- Cross-agent consistency also declined from 2.2 ("above average") in 2009 to 1.8 ("below average") in 2010, another big source of customer frustration
"Multichannel customer experience has suffered in this sector due to the recent market meltdown, although service through some specific channels has improved," said Anand Subramaniam, VP of Marketing for eGain. "Even so, forward-looking businesses in the sector are adopting a Customer Interaction Hub (CIH) strategy to unify cross-channel and cross-agent experiences to meet the needs of today's highly connected customer."
Details of findings can be obtained by sending an email request to pr@egain.com.
About eGain
eGain (
Headquartered in Mountain View, California, eGain has operating presence in North America, EMEA and APAC. To learn more about us, visit www.eGain.com or call our offices: +1-800-821-4358 (US), +44-(0)-1753-464646 (EMEA), or +91-(0)-20-6608-9200 (APAC). Also, follow us on Twitter (http://twitter.com/egain) and Facebook (http://facebook.com/egain).
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* Telephone customer service was included as an additional area of measurement for 2010, and included criteria such as the number of transfers and hold time.
Contact Information:
eGain media contact:
Jamie Abayan
Phone: 650-230-7532
Email:pr@egain.com