Contacting the Service Desk. Where do they care more about customers: in the field of IT services or repair of air conditioners?

    Last winter, we conducted a study of the sites of small IT outsourcers throughout Russia , within the framework of which we studied how companies interact with their customers. Understanding the organization of customer interaction is important for us to develop a cloud ticket for the Okdesk system .

    The results upset us, to say the least. We hoped that the crisis shook the players in the market and made them more customer-oriented in terms of organizing convenient channels for contacting support and registration of applications. The reality turned out to be sobering:

    every 4th site did not offer even 2 basic channels of interaction for communication : phone number and email;

    • only 9 out of 100 companiesOffered on the site 4 ways to apply ;

    • only 1.3% of sites have found all the investigated options for communication with service support .

    Is this the case in a highly specialized service business? We decided to check it out on an even larger scale!

    Do you have a chance to repair the air conditioner, leave a request for a non-working elevator or complain about problems in the gas boiler?

    Calls to the Help Desk.  Okdesk study results


    Methods of research of channels of contacting the support service (Help Desk)


    For the second stage of the study, about 500 sites were selected (approximately 60% more than in winter) for the following queries:

    • maintenance and repair of air conditioners;
    • maintenance and repair of elevators;
    • maintenance and repair of gas boilers.

    For comparison, the list of cities was left virtually the same: Voronezh, Yekaterinburg, Kazan, Krasnodar, Krasnoyarsk, Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, Novosibirsk, Perm, etc.

    Coverage of support service channel research

    As in the first stage, the analysis involved checking for the presence on the site of 5 of the following options for contacting support:

    • Email address
    • telephone number;
    • online chat;
    • web application form;
    • access to the client portal.

    Help Desk registration channels

    Earlier, we already explained why we chose these 5 channels.

    For the purity of the experiment, we also did not analyze the actual availability of the dispatcher when making a phone call or the manager when contacting support chat. Although, we will not hide, the desire to “dig” this part appeared after the first stage.
    Thus, the conditions for both studies were almost identical. Only the sample of the number of sites that fell into the 2nd stage increased by 60%.

    Statistics of the use of channels of contacting service support


    The first, but very big chagrin. Unlike the first stage of the study, among the sites of highly specialized service companies, we unfortunately found even the 404th error in the “Contacts” section.
    At such moments, our emotions were comparable to the picture below. And this is due to the fact that, of course, we did not have a real problem with contacting a service provider as part of the study.

    The quality of service support.  It's time to implement Help Desk!

    Support chats are installed on most sites (thanks to free tariffs), but dispatchers were almost always offline. In this case, we set “0” opposite the given channel for a particular site.

    We did not find a phone to contact support only on 2 sites , while both basic channels of interaction (contact number and email) with the company were found in 79% of the research objects.

    That is, every 5th business of repairing an air conditioner, elevator or gas boiler offers you only 1 contact option to solve your problems, and this is, in fact, the most closed and non-client-oriented channel - “Sending an email by email”.

    Service companies are closed for communication with the client

    In general, and unfortunately, these indicators correlate with the results for the IT service business: 96% and 77%, respectively.

    But in the presence of a web form, in one form or another, the business of repairing gas boilers, elevators and air conditioners “ran away” from IT outsourcing forward. 68% against 51%, respectively.

    Access to the “Client Portal”or “My Account” with application registration functions, we found in only 9.9% of “respondents”. For comparison, the results of the 1st stage revealed 21% of sites. Overall, this is not surprising. IT service providers are more mature in terms of business automation and a much larger number have specialized Help Desk solutions with this functionality.

    Support channels.  results

    Of course, we searched for the most “client-oriented” and “multi-channel” sites in terms of customer interaction with service support. Therefore, it was important to check for several ways to contact the Help Desk at the same time.
    Unfortunately, the exam for the presence of 4 main channels of circulation (we, as we wrote in the first study, do not consider online chat to be the main one), only 6.7% of “students” passed to the support service (more than 30 sites).

    Customer-oriented service companies.  results

    Surprisingly, despite a 1.6-fold increase in the sample, the percentage of sites that have all 5 investigated methods of access coincided up to tenths - 1.3%.

    Help Desk.  5 key channels of circulation

    Instead of summing up


    The overall picture for IT outsourcing and highly specialized service companies throughout Russia is practically the same. The correlations in the availability and provision of convenient channels for customers to interact with the support service are significant, and the indicators themselves are quite low. Most likely, many figures based on the results of 2 studies can be considered the starting point as a whole for the entire service industry of the Russian Federation.

    Oddly enough, a highly specialized service business prefers to use a web form as a way of communicating with a client. 68% of the sites of “respondents” instead of 51% of IT outsourcing.

    What is the “Client Portal”and, as a result, the transparency of the client companies that repair elevators, gas boilers and air conditioners do not know. Their maturity in this part is significantly behind their colleagues in the provision of IT services 9.9% versus 21%. At the same time, maturity in this part is clearly not enough for the entire service business.

    Unlike companies specializing in providing IT services, many “respondents” of the second stage of the study also sell equipment or, conversely, stores provide after-sales services, which is generally very reasonable.

    And in what way is it more convenient for you to interact with the support service of a service company?

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