••• customer experience research
Consumers cut ties after poor customer service
A survey by Milwaukee-based cloud communications firm Corvisa shows consumers are becoming fed-up with poor customer service and often cut ties with businesses as a result. Nearly half (48 percent) of U.S. consumers surveyed said they have stopped doing business with a company because of negative customer service experiences in the past year, with nearly a quarter of Millennials saying they would stop doing business after just one negative interaction. Some customers said they have gone as far as yelling at the call-center agent (18 percent) or hanging up the phone (40 percent). The survey also shows that 41 percent of customers still rank phone calls as their top method of communicating with customer service, a number that increases to 56 percent when customers are frustrated. Seventy-eight percent of respondents would hang up if they had to wait on hold for more than 15 minutes, while a quarter would be lost at five minutes or less. Lowering hold times is an area the majority of respondents (57 percent) believe businesses can improve on.
••• travel and leisure research
Vacationers use reviews but don’t take time to post their own
A survey of U.K. adults by researcher TNS, per Biz Report, found that while many rely on reviews for travel plan-ning few actually post them. The survey shows 15 percent of those surveyed would not book a vacation without first looking at reviews on sites such as TripAdvisor and 39 percent said they “generally look at some reviews” while 16 percent “sometimes” check out reviews. Twenty-eight percent said they paid “little attention” or “no atten-tion” to reviews while researching travel. However, when asked how many post reviews about travel experiences, 11 percent said they did so “often” or “all the time” and more than half (56 percent) said they “never” post reviews and 11 percent “seldom.” Older adults were more likely to post online reviews, with 13 percent of 35-to-54-year-olds doing so “all the time or often,” compared with 10 percent of those age 16 to 34 and 9 percent of those over 55.