Nearly six out of ten (59 per cent) of IT professionals across the UK said their organisation increased its investment into customer service operations over the past two years. That’s according to a new study commissioned by Enghouse Interactive.
The study also revealed that 95 per cent of IT professionals made changes to their customer service channels since the start of the pandemic. And nearly two-thirds of respondents (64 per cent) expect that the budget for customer service channels will increase over the next two years.
While still widely used, traditional communication channels like email and telephone calls are declining in popularity. 71 per cent of organisations used email as a communication channel before the pandemic. That’s expected to fall to 57 per cent by 2024. Moreover, while 64 per cent of organisations used telephone calls as a communication channel before the pandemic, that’s expected to decline to 55 per cent over the next two years.
The beneficiaries are new digital channels such as web chat with a live agent which is already on the rise and expected to increase from 31 per cent using it before COVID-19 to 55 per cent by 2024. Social media instant messaging is also accelerating with 21 per cent using it at the beginning of 2020 but expected to double in usage to 42 per cent deploying it within the next two years. Video chat with a live agent is also expected to grow strongly from 34 per cent using before COVID to 45 per cent two years from now.
Most IT professionals see the changes their organisations have made to their customer service channels since the pandemic began as sustainable. They are not going back. 70 per cent say all or most changes made will stay.
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