Customer service is on the rebound. After more than a year of decline, customer satisfaction in the second quarter of 2013 was at 81%, 3 percentage points higher than the previous quarter. Customer service data indicate that satisfaction in the United States improved to 82% (up 2 percentage points), but it still wasnt enough to reach the top 10 of countries. It notably was behind Russia (No. 9), Canada (No. 2), and Mexico (No. 10). New Zealand led all countries with 92% satisfaction.
How do we know? The Zendesk Benchmark. Rather than a survey or expert opinion, the Zendesk Benchmark is based on actual support and customer service interactions from more than 16,000 companies across 125 countries who have chosen to participate. They are drawn from the more than 30,000 companies that use Zendesk to provide customer service to more than 200 million people. It measures key metrics around customer support efficiency, customer self-service behavior, and levels of customer engagement.
Our latest report has a special focus on customer self-service. Using a formula that examines how many people are using self-service features like forums and communities to solve their own issues versus the number of people who submit support tickets for help, weve developed the Self-Service Score. The higher the score, the more effectively self-service tools serve customers. Globally, for every four people helping themselves in forums and communities, one is submitting a requesta Self-Service Score of 4.1.
Customers also are increasingly turning to mobile to help themselves. Over the past year, the percentage of customers accessing self-service content from their mobile devices has grown 50%, reaching 26% for the second quarter of 2013. Mobile self-service usage is drastically higher in some industries, such as media (84%) and social media (57%).
Read the Zendesk Benchmark: 2013 Q2 report
