Survey Shows Disjointed Communications Technologies Fail Customers

Eighty-nine percent of employees say broken communications workflow impacts customer satisfaction and the bottom line

RingCentral, Inc. (NYSE: RNG), a leading provider of global enterprise cloud communications, collaboration, and contact center solutions, today released a new report, Overcoming the Digital Disconnect: How Disjointed Communications Technologies Are Letting Customers Down — and How to Solve It . Based on a global survey of 2,000 customer-facing employees by CITE Research, the report reveals a direct connection between employee and customer engagement. The data shows that disjointed communications technologies not only harm employee productivity and morale, but also hurt customer satisfaction and the bottom line.

Companies today collect and manage more customer data than ever before across a wide array of channels, yet skyrocketing customer expectations demand swift issue resolution. The research indicates that due to disjointed communications technologies, consumers have poor customer service experiences. This results in customers dropping four brands per year on average. The research also reveals that employee and customer engagement are closely linked — and therein lies the solution. Ninety-one percent of employees believe a seamless platform that lets them navigate between all the ways they communicate and collaborate with coworkers and customers would make customers happier, which in turn would drive greater employee job satisfaction and happiness.

“For too long, enterprises have approached employee engagement and customer engagement in two separate silos – but they are inextricably linked,” said Nicole France, vice president and principal analyst, Constellation Research. “Communications technology has tremendous potential to bridge internal workflow silos, improve customer-facing employee productivity, and increase overall customer satisfaction. But to achieve this, enterprises need tools that consolidate customer communications across multiple channels and at the same time seamlessly facilitate internal employee collaboration.”

Disjointed communications workflow hurts the company bottom line

Managing siloed customer data has created friction: complex workflows and disjointed communications technologies frustrate employees, hurting their ability to serve customers, impacting professional and personal relationships, and ultimately, affecting the company bottom line.

• Seventy-five percent of customer-facing employees say they can’t effectively service customers due to disjointed communications technologies making it difficult to collaborate with coworkers, hindering productivity, and making them unhappy at work.
• It doesn’t end at the office — 50 percent of employees say they take this frustration home and are more likely to be rude to their family and friends.

Customers don’t tolerate poor service

In an increasingly digital world, customers expect to connect with companies over the channels of their choice — and lose patience if issues are not resolved quickly.

• Gen Z and millennials cut ties after a poor customer service experience more than five times in a year.
• Were you even listening? Eighty-eight percent of customers hate having to repeat themselves via multiple different channels.
• 75 percent of customers would rather do household chores than communicate with an ineffective chatbot.

The employee and customer engagement equation

Employees seek to ease communication with colleagues and resolve customer issues swiftly, and customers seek rapid resolution on the channel of their choice. An integrated communications platform delivers this seamless experience, improving both employee and customer engagement and increasing the bottom line.

• Ninety-two percent of employees say an integrated communications platform would enhance both the employee and customer experience, and improve customer satisfaction scores.
• Eighty-six percent of employees agree that a seamless communications platform would increase company profitability and 83 percent of employees would stay longer with a company.

“Delivering the experience customers demand today requires addressing the friction that results from fragmented employee and customer communications across various channels,” said Kira Makagon, EVP of innovation, RingCentral. “Technology has a vital role to play in breaking down these communication workflow silos. This survey confirms that employee engagement has a direct impact on customer engagement — and drastically boosts customer retention and business profitability.”

To learn more about this and other findings on AI, team messaging and video meetings, read the full report here.

Overcoming the Digital Disconnect: How Disjointed Communications Technologies Are Letting Customers Down — and How to Solve It is based on a survey of 2,000 customer-facing knowledge workers and customer support employees in the US, UK, and Australia, conducted by CITE Research on behalf of RingCentral.

About RingCentral

RingCentral, Inc. (NYSE: RNG) is a leading provider of global enterprise cloud communications, collaboration, and contact center solutions. More flexible and cost-effective than legacy on-premises systems, RingCentral empowers modern mobile and distributed workforces to communicate, collaborate, and connect from any location, on any device, and via any mode. RingCentral provides unified voice, video meetings, team messaging, digital customer engagement, and integrated contact center solutions for enterprises globally. RingCentral’s open platform integrates with leading business apps and enables customers to easily customize business workflows. RingCentral is headquartered in Belmont, California, and has offices around the world.

©2019 RingCentral, Inc. All rights reserved. RingCentral and the RingCentral logo are trademarks of RingCentral, Inc.

Mariana Kosturos
RingCentral
[email protected]
650-562-6545

Caitlin Gribbons
Method Communications
[email protected]
415-849-1312