On today’s Business Beat, Jeff Sloan shares data showing that customers prefer a real person-to-person interaction by phone to other forms of communication.
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Good morning, Paul! Technology is so fast moving, it can be maddening trying to keep up for those of us operating our own businesses. I mean, just when you figure out one thing, there’s a newer, better way to do whatever it is you’re doing. But every now and then, doing things the good old-fashioned way is just, well, good enough to stay on top. And while this may surprise you, Paul, one example of this is how customers want to interact with brands today. And that is by the good old phone call first and foremost. Voice interaction is No. 1, according to the State of the Call report, just released by Performance Phone Platform. There were over 12,000 consumers polled for this study and 32% of them prefer a good old-fashioned phone call with a brand representative, as opposed to any other way of interacting. Email comes in at second, text messaging a distant third at 12%. Now let’s take a deeper look into the numbers. A phone conversation is No. 1 with 41% of consumers say they prefer that to email, which is at 30%. For closing sales, the phone wins again, 29% to 25% over email. And even for appointment scheduling, doing it over the phone wins. As a result of this information, 36% of businesses polled indicate that in 2022, they plan to increase their use of voice in the next 12 months to what is a clear customer preference. My view, you can even use this as a strategic advantage against your competition, given how strongly and clearly consumers prefer to interact. So there you go, Paul, for those of us loving to do things the traditional way, you know, those of us who still keep our to-do notes on a piece of paper as opposed to one of these newfangled apps you could otherwise use, or for those of us who prefer to exchange contact information with a business card, the data shows that in this case, the good old-fashioned way of a real person-to-person interaction by phone wins out to achieve the highest level of customer satisfaction for brand to customer engagement. I’m Jeff Sloan, founder and CEO of startupnation.com, and that’s today’s Business Beat on the Great Voice of the Great Lakes, WJR.
