Global customer satisfaction levels fell during the holiday season with the retail and travel industries being the most affected, according to new research.
According to the quarterly Zendesk Benchmark report−which was based on actual interactions between 16,000 participating organizations and their customers across 125 countries−overall customer satisfaction dropped globally by two percentage points in the fourth quarter of 2013 to 80%.
The report noted that this was deemed a yearly trend, but retailers had been especially vulnerable in the recent holiday period when satisfaction levels dropped six points, compared to just two points a year earlier.
Travel too was severely impacted, evidenced by a seven-point drop and there were increased customer service demands on these two industries at their busiest time of the year. Other industries experiencing decreases in customer satisfaction for the quarter included software and healthcare.
“Customer satisfaction took a hit across the board and retailers felt more pain than usual,” Sam Boonin, research lead for the Zendesk Benchmark report, said in a press release. “The holiday service woes serve as a wake-up call for companies to better anticipate and prepare for seasonal demands.”
According to the report, retailers had not added enough staff to match the extra deluge of requests over the holidays. The Zendesk research revealed that the workload for support agents rose 19% in the last two months of 2013, compared to a 6% increase in 2012.
The best performing sectors globally were IT services and consultancy with a 96% satisfaction level, followed by government and non-profit (95%) and real estate (94%). The worst performing sectors globally were social media (69%), travel and tourism (75%), and entertainment and gaming (76%).
Countries were also ranked in the report: Norway (91%), Canada (89%), and Denmark (89%) were the top three while the other end of the satisfaction scale attracted India, whose 54% figure was a 13-point drop from the third quarter, Turkey (61%), and the United Arab Emirates (67%).