The research was conducted among over 200 operations, IT and service directors by Redshift Research. Sectors included retail, distribution, manufacturing, construction and business/professional services.
Some 17% of these organisations believe their workforce is almost completely unmotivated by the idea of customer service (“hardly any/less than 20% staff”). When asked about investment in customer service, only 8% of organisations stated they could calculate the ROI with total accuracy, and 49% of organisations believed their calculations would be rough or non-existent.
“Poor executive sponsorship and leadership generally lead to inconsistency in an organisation’s customer service,” said Jonathan Chevallier, strategic development director at Cognito.
“Engaging the employee in a service excellence culture is vital, as are tools and methodologies for keeping it monitored and at a high standard at all times.” He added that a lack of service investment ROI case studies further undermined the incentive to address the situation.
The research showed that the impact of staff motivation on customer service is measured mostly by customer feedback (51%), with only 11% of organisations adopting Net Promoter Scores.
These results are part of Cognito’s first Annual Nationwide Service Report (ANSR), due to be released later this month.
