The Latest Customer Service Statistics You Don’t Want To Miss In 2021

Looking for some customer support statistics to develop your business strategy for 2021?

Understanding customer expectations and their impacts on your business is a great way to get an idea of how you should improve your customer service.

In this post, we’ve gathered tons of customer support statistics all in one place to quickly summarise the state of customer service as it stands now. 

Use this table of content to jump straight into the area that interests you most.

The importance of high-quality customer service

95% of customers say that customer service is important to their choice of and loyalty to a brand. (Source: Microsoft Dynamic 365’s State of Global Customer Service Report 2018)

86% of customers are more likely to trust companies with their relevant information if they explain how it provides a better customer service experience. (Source: Salesforce’s State of Connected Customer 2018)

88% of customer-centric businesses say delivering a high-quality, personalized, and seamless customer experience across all channels, business lines, and products is important to their company’s overall business performance. (Source: Harvard Business Review’s Staying Connected with Customers in the Contactless Economy 2020)

52% of customers want to speak to a live agent when facing a crisis and need a solution to a problem with a product or service. (Source: McKinsey’s Customer First: Personalizing the Customer-Care Journey 2019)

More than 66% of marketers say their companies compete mostly based on customer service. (Source: Gartner’s Customer Experience 2018 Survey)

25% of brands will have significant advances in the quality of their customer experience in the year 2021. (Source: Forrester’s Customer Experience Predictions for 2021)

Customer service expectations

93% of customer service teams agree that today’s customers have higher expectations than ever before. (Source: HubSpot’s The State of Customer Service in 2020)

30.9% of customers report they expect to receive excellent customer service, while 40.7% expect a good service experience. (Source: Gartner’s State of the Customer 2020: Understanding Customer Service Expectations)

90% of consumers regard resolution as their most important customer service issue. (Source: KPMG’s Global Customer Experience Excellence 2020 Report)

78% of customers prefer different customer engagement channels. (Source: Salesforce’s The State of Connected Customer 2019)

73% of customers say one extraordinary experience raises their expectations of other companies. (Source: Salesforce’s The State of Connected Customer 2019)

75% of customers expect companies to use new technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) to create better experiences. (Source: Salesforce’s The State of Connected Customer 2019)

54% of customers say companies need to transform how they engage with them (Source: Salesforce’s The State of Connected Customer 2019)

Customer experience statistics

57% of contact center leaders put customer experience into their high priority, and 85% of them say customer experience is the main driver for their investment in the contact center. (Source: Deloitte’s Global Contact Center 2019 Survey).

93% of customer service teams prioritize creating a great customer experience and retaining customers than saving/reducing costs. (Source: HubSpot’s The State of Customer Service in 2020)

Only 14% of consumers strongly agree that companies effectively provide a positive customer experience through convergence between new digital, mobile, and social channel interactions and more traditional ones. (Source: Accenture’s Customer 2020: Are You Future-Ready or Reliving the Past?)

81.6% of organizations agree customer experience offers a competitive edge. (Source: NTT’s 2020 Global Customer Experience Benchmarking Report)

80% of customers say the experience a company provides is as important as its products and services. (Source: Salesforce’s State of Connected Customer 2018)

Over 72% of customers say their prior experiences with a company is the main factor that influences their expectations. (Source: Gartner’s State of the Customer 2020: Understanding Customer Service Expectations)

Personalization in customer service statistics 

52% of customers say companies are generally impersonal. (Source: Salesforce’s State of Connected Customer 2019)

76.8% of organizations have advanced some form of personalization capability to improve customer experience. (Source: NTT’s 2020 Global Customer Experience Benchmarking Report)

With personalized customer interactions, firms report improved customer loyalty (33%), increased customer engagement (33%), and faster innovation (23%). (Source: Forrester’s Personalization Demystified: Enchant Your Customers By Going From Good To Great 2020)

80% of shoppers are more likely to buy from a company that offers personalized experiences. (Source: Epsilon’s The Power of Me: The Impact of Personalization on Marketing Performance 2018 Report)

Customer service tools statistics

There are 80 help desk solutions currently available in the market. (Source: Datanyze)

57% of companies have already moved (or are planning to migrate) their customer relationship management (CRM) and knowledge management (KM) capabilities to the cloud in 2021. (Source: Deloitte’s Global Contact Center 2019 Survey).

82% of companies use help desk systems and/or knowledge bases/FAQ to enable customer service teams, while only 29% adopt live chat. (Source: HubSpot’s The State of Customer Service in 2020)

Only 32% of organizations use CRM solutions to manage customer data. (Source: HubSpot’s The State of Customer Service in 2020)

86% of companies that have used a help desk reported that it made them more productive. (Source: HubSpot’s The State of Customer Service in 2020)

Nearly 82% of companies on the Nasdaq First North Growth Market use at least 3 communication tools like email, phone, and social media to interact with customers. (Source: Jenny’s Customer Experience Trends Report 2020). 

Using a service desk can help a company decrease support management staff by 50%. (Source: Sphere Software’s How An Effective Service Desk Improves Productivity And Operations In The Mid-Market 2017 WhitePaper)

Customer satisfaction statistics

71% of customers expect companies to communicate with them in real-time. (Source: Salesforce’s The State of Connected Customer 2019)

73% of companies say customer satisfaction is their number one metric to measure customer service performance. (Source: HubSpot’s The State of Customer Service in 2020)

73% of people say that waiting too long on hold is the #1 “very annoying” thing about being on the phone with a company. (Source: RingCentral’s The 2020 Customer Communications Review)

90% of customers rate an “immediate” response as important or very important when they have a customer service question. (Source: HubSpot’s Research Consumer Customer Support Survey 2018)

Ecommerce and digital marketing agencies are keeping strong with Net Promoter Scores (NPS) in the low 60s. (Source: Retently’s 2020 NPS Benchmarks)

The power of great customer service

66% of customers are willing to pay more for a better customer experience. (Source: Salesforce’s The State of Connected Customer 2019)

56% of customers say good customer service inspires loyalty. (Source: KPMG’s The Truth About Customer Loyalty 2019 Survey)

63% of U.S. customers are willing to share their personal information with a company that offers a great customer experience. (Source: PWC’s Experience Is Everything: Here’s How to Get It Right)

Site visitors who use web chat are 2.8 times more likely to convert than those that don’t. (Source: Forrester’s The Second Coming Of Digital-First Customer Service Solutions 2018 Report)

Companies at the top of their industries in NPS for three or more years—grow revenues roughly 2.5 times as fast as their industry peers and deliver two to five times shareholder returns over the next 10 years. (Source: Harvard Business Review’s Are You Undervaluing Your Customers?)

The cost of bad customer service

64% of consumers switch providers due to poor customer experience. (Source: Accenture’s Customer 2020: Are You Future-Ready or Reliving the Past?)

All verticals face high churn due to poor customer service, including telecommunications (52%), retail/ecommerce (13%), healthcare-related products or services (12%), insurance (11%), and banking/financial services (11%). (Source: TechSee Augmented Vision’s 2019 Customer Churn Survey Results)

55% of global customers say that they were either unlikely or very unlikely to give a brand a second chance after a negative experience. (Source: Brandwatch’s The Best Brands and Industries for Customer Experience 2020)

American consumers spend an average of 13 hours per year in the calling queue with an estimated monetary cost of $38 billion. (Source: Harvard Business Review’s Why Is Customer Service So Bad? Because It’s Profitable)

Multichannel customer service statistics

40% of people won’t do business with a company if they can’t use their preferred customer service channels. (Source: Salesforce’s State of the Connected Customer 2019 Report)

55% of customers—including 68% of millennials/Gen Zers—prefer digital channels over traditional ones. (Source: Salesforce’s State of the Connected Customer 2019 Report)

Over 85% of contact center leaders say that social media is the simplest way to support customers. (Source: Deloitte’s Global Contact Center 2019 Survey).

37% of companies have successfully replaced calls with cheaper or more convenient channels like social media and messaging apps. (Source: Deloitte’s Global Contact Center 2019 Survey).

29% of U.S. customers aged 18 to 39 prefer online chat communication before and after purchase. (Source: RingCentral’s The 2020 Customer Communications Review)

The top five engagement channels that consumers expect from brands include email, website, voice call, live person, and SMS text. (Source: CMO Council’s How Covid Has Changed The Channels Of Engagement 2020 Report)

Self-service support statistics

Since the lockdown began, 22% of U.S. banking consumers have used online self-service tools, and 80% of them have had a positive experience. (Source: BCG’s Redefining Customer Service for the Future 2020)

Only 15% of companies on the Nasdaq First North Growth Market have an FAQ page on their website, and just 6.9% established a live chat. (Source: Jenny’s Customer Experience Trends Report 2020).

88% of U.S. customers state that they expect brands or organizations to have a self-service support portal. (Source: Statista’s “Do You Expect a Brand or Organization to Have an Online Self-Service Support Portal?” 2018 Survey)

When reordering, self-service tools are preferred by 86% of today’s B2B executives over dealing with a salesperson. (Source: McKinsey’s Customer experience: New Capabilities, New Audiences, New Opportunities 2017 Report)

68% customers would rather use self-service channels like knowledge bases or customer portals for simple questions or issues. (Source: Salesforce’s State of the Connected Customer 2019 Report)

Chatbot, AI and automation in customer service

About 75% of companies plan to invest in automation technologies such as AI and process automation. (Source: Deloitte’s Global Contact Center 2019 Survey).

By implementing AI-powered customer service tools, companies have improved first-contact resolution by 5% to 7%, reduced handling time by 20% to 30%, and reduced new-hire training time by 25% to 40%. (Source: BCG’s Redefining Customer Service for the Future 2020)

By 2022, 20% of customer service will be handled by AI-powered conversational agents. (Source: Gartner’s How to Use AI to Create the Customer Experience of the Future 2018) 

Chatbots can learn up to 92% of visitor questions within just five months, but only less than 3% of companies have a chatbot on their website. (Source: Jenny’s Customer Experience Trends Report 2020). 

Chatbots can resolve a customer request in 2 seconds around 78% of the time. (Source: Jenny’s Customer Experience Trends Report 2020). 

68% of customers say chatbots could answer their questions more quickly than a human agent could/would. (Source: Sinch’s Mobile Consumer Engagement 2020)

69% of consumers prefer chatbots because they deliver quick answers to simple questions. (Source: CMO Council’s How Covid Has Changed The Channels Of Engagement 2020 Report)

Are you ready to improve your customer service in 2021?

Now that you’ve known the latest customer service statistics in 2021. It’s time to use them to review your customer support strategy, invest in a help desk solution, and train your service agent to enhance customer experience. 

Need an ultimate customer service tool for your ecommerce business? Try Gorgias and enjoy a 14-day free trial with unlimited access to premium features.

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Growth Marketing Manager at Gorgias