Nuance (News - Alert) Communications has announced the findings of a commissioned study conducted by Forrester (News - Alert) Consulting on behalf of Nuance titled, “Driving Consumer Engagement with Automated Telephone Customer Service.” 

It found that consumers rate automated telephone customer service higher than live agents for certain straightforward interactions. 'In five out of ten posed scenarios, consumers preferred automated telephone customer service systems over live agent interactions for tasks like prescription refills, checking the status of a flight from a cell phone, checking account balances, store information requests and tracking shipments.

 

Consumers’ satisfaction with customer service leaves a lot of room for improvement, too, the study found: 'Only 49 percent of U.S. online adults report being satisfied, very satisfied or extremely satisfied with companies’ customer service in general.'

And we're just used to it by now: Automated telephone systems are 'an expected and accepted customer service channel,' the survey found, with 82 percent of US online adults having used an automated Touchtone or speech recognition system to contact customer service in the past 12 months. 

Of course 93 percent of consumers have engaged with a live agent. Let's hope that's not going away any time soon, either.

The survey also found that a 'strong majority' of consumers are interested in at least one proactive notification alert via their choice of e-mail, voice message, or text message. Consumers were most open to notifications related to the travel industry - 93 percent -  which include such things as flight status updates and confirmation of reservations for flights, hotels, and car rentals. 

Eighty-eight percent of consumers were interested in notification from a financial services institution, with strong interest in transaction confirmations. 

“The contact center plays a crucial role in retaining consumers, yet less than half of U.S. consumers report being satisfied with their customer service experiences,” says Micky Tsui, Nuance’s senior vice president and general manager, Enterprise. 

According to Forrester’s (News - Alert) study, when it comes to evaluating a great experience with automated speech recognition customer service systems, two-thirds of consumers value having the ability to speak to a live agent at any time.