What Bugs Customers the Most About Your Service?

No matter how big or small your business or nonprofit is, customer service can make or break its brand. At some point, most of your customers will seek customer support for a variety of reasons. Can you guess what bugs them the most?

According to Consumer Reports National Research Center, 88% of the people surveyed recently had dealt with customer service in the past year—to question a bill, request a repair, return ill-fitting merchandise, and more. Many of them didn’t like the experience and had a problem with customer service. Although the findings relate to B2C (business-to-consumer), it’s worth looking at for B2Bs and nonprofits.

The findings:

• Half of the people surveyed reported leaving a store without making their intended purchase because of poor service.
• 57% were so steamed that they hung up the phone without a resolution.
• Women were more annoyed than men, as were people over age 45.
• The number of Americans who think that complaining is worthwhile has fallen to 50% from 61% since 2011. (Arizona State University study cited)

Related Article: The 3 Pillars of Great Customer Service

What bugged them most?

On a 10-point scale, from “not annoying at all” to “tremendously irritating,” the top things that bugged respondents were:

• Not getting a live person on the phone (75%);
• Customer service being rude or condescending (75%);
• Getting disconnected (74%);
• Getting disconnected and being unable to reach the same rep again (71%); and
• Being transferred to a representative who can’t help or is wrong (70%).

What bugs you the most about customer service?

What do you think bugs your customers the most?