For the second consecutive quarter, customer satisfaction rose globally. This increase comes after more than a year of decline, a report recently released by Zendesk Benchmark shows. Customer satisfaction ratings sat at 82 percent in the third quarter of 2013, its highest percentage since the first quarter of 2012.
Countries like Brazil and Russia saw significant gains with fast-growing economies. This coupled with increased ratings in historically low-scoring industries such as social media and telecommunications have attributed to the growing levels of global customer satisfaction.
The newly released report was produced by Zendesk, a global provider of software for better customer service. Zendesk tracks customer satisfaction and service trends each quarter based on actual interactions. The report examined 16,000 participating companies and their customers.
In customer satisfaction, the United States rose to 81 percent, but still fell short of the top ten. Meanwhile, Russia, who has historically struggled with customer service, has seen a steady rise as of late, securing a spot in the top three this quarter. Brazil saw the largest percentage gain this quarter, up 10 percentage points.
Companies who are in the fastest growing economies are putting more emphasis on delivering higher quality customer service, which appears to be resulting in sustained growth in this sector.
It also appears companies are striving to provide integrated customer experience across a multitude of channels. The report suggests that those channels that have been long used such as phone and voice services still receive the highest levels of customer satisfaction, while newer channels, such as Facebook and Twitter, ranked last, as companies are still experimenting to determine the best social support practices.
Sam Boonin, research lead for the Zendesk Benchmark and vice president of products at Zendesk said, “The omni-channel consumer is on the rise -- jumping from web to email to chat to Twitter with ease. The Zendesk Benchmark is uncovering that companies must maintain a consistent level of service for each channel.”