“Sorry” and “thank you” isn’t synonymous to good customer service

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The communication between companies and their customers is never simple and some industries are more successful than others when it comes to customer service. The quality of customer service also depends on where you are, according to a new study, and the UAE reports high customer satisfaction in the second quarter of 2014.

Saying “sorry” and “thank you” isn’t synonymous to good customer service, say researchers from Zendesk, a software development company and cloud-based customer service platform. In fact, lengthier conversations with the client usually indicate of poor customer service. Repeating “sorry” will only bring you unhappy customers, so it’s important for companies to track their communication with the clients and to know when pressure can escalate. These are the findings by Zendesk’s Benchmark latest index looks at the behavior of customers and agents.

The report finds that IT services and consultancy companies deal best with customers and claim a 94% satisfaction rate. Governments and NGOs are also making their customers happy, or at least 93% of them. Clients are least satisfied when communicating with the entertainment and gaming industry. The study found the lowest satisfaction rate of 75%, followed by social media (78%) and travel and hospitality (82%).

Globally, the customer satisfaction has increased 2 points to 83% in the second quarter of 2014. It is estimated on customer service and support interactions from more than 25,000 companies, across 140 countries. Measuring different factors such as customer support efficiency, customer engagement and self-service behavior, the index shows that New Zealand is home to the most satisfied customers in the world. 93% of the clients in the country enjoyed happy ending, while Canada and Norway are closely following with 92%. Italy and Switzerland round the top 5, while the UAE is 13th in the list with 85% of customers saying they were satisfied.

Of the 32 nations ranked in the report, India comes 32nd as the country having the poorest customer service – only 58% of the clients were happy about the companies’ ability to solve problems. Turkey and Colombia are also countries with rather lower customer satisfaction – at 68% and 71%, respectively.

The researchers also found that the most important factor for good customer service is adequate response time. Longer, wordy messages, on the other hand, are quite unattractive to the clients. And agents who use words such as “sorry”, “please”, and “thank you” in their responses will often have unhappy customers. And signing e-mails with “Best wishes” isn’t going to help – customers prefer “Best Regards”, “Yours sincerely”, or simply “Cheers”.

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