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Mattersight Survey Suggests Emotion, Personality is Important in Customer Service

June 19, 2015

Mattersight recently unleashed the results of a study on customer preferences and people’s thoughts on their contact center experiences. The survey, which included data from more than 1,000 consumers throughout? the United States, seems to point to customers’ desire for more emotionally satisfying customer service interactions.


Among the key takeaways, according to Ryan Swanger, Mattersight senior vice president, are that 75 percent of consumers report they are frustrated after a call even if their problem is resolved. That’s because they feel that agents are just following a process and not really concerned with meeting their needs. Also, he noted, the survey revealed that 92 percent of the people asked would select an agent they feel could best connect with them based on their personality if that option was presented to them.

Here are a few other stats from the survey:

•42 percent of consumers surveyed said their poorest call center experience was with cable or phone provider, followed by health care and insurance.

•Nearly 40 percent of those surveyed said that banks provide the best call center experience.

•Reaching customer service reps who don’t understand their needs is right up there with long wait times in customers’ list of their least favorite things related to contact centers.

•More than 70 percent of those surveyed suggest one bad customer experience could stop them from purchasing from that brand again.

Swanger of Mattersight, which sells personality-based software applications for the contact center, explains that the company defines various personality types by reviewing the words customers use to communicate. It then uses that information to slot people into various personality-type categories.

For example, he says, there are emotions-based people; singer Taylor Swift falls into this category, he says. Opinions-based people are those who seek verification and reference points, he says, noting U2 lead singer Bono fits this profile. There are at least a couple other personality types as well.

Swanger spoke this week about a Mattersight client that is a military health care payer, for which the company delivered tangible improvement in customer satisfaction and efficiency. Mattersight, he said, helped the company create a culture to think about its interactions with customers differently – not just good or bad call, but about customer types and how to address them.

Mattersight is also working on expanding its personality technology to other areas beyond just customer experience to help companies do things such as differentiate technology or other products for different customer segments. 




Edited by Peter Bernstein



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