50 Customer Service Statistics and Facts to Know

If, as a business owner, you believe “The customer is always right,” then customer service is and always will be a cornerstone of your business’s success. Since your business needs customers’ continued patronage and support to generate enough cash flow to survive, providing good customer service is important, and it  needs to be a vital part of your business. 

“Easy,” you might think. “I’ll just have someone man the phone 24/7 to answer calls and questions.” But customer service is much more complex and it requires a lot more than manning the phone 24 hours a day, for seven days in every week. Why? Because customers expect quality and proactive service at every stage of the sales process, not just when they need help.

It can be challenging to know exactly what customers want when it comes to customer service, and hard to know what your competitors are doing in the name of customer service, to attract and to retain customers. With this in mind, we have curated a list of 50 customer service statistics to give you a lot of what you need to know to make conclusive data-based decisions on how to improve your customer service experience.

Why Is Customer Service Important?

As a business owner, why do you need to continuously improve your customers’ service experience? A popular misconception is that as long as you have a good product, it will sell itself, and customers will remain loyal to you.

However, unless you’ve created a truly industry-defining innovation, there will always be a competing business selling a product similar to yours at a similar price point. Since this is true, you will probably always be faced with rows upon rows of near-identical products, and your customers are increasingly turning to the customer service experience to help them distinguish brands and choose between companies and retailers offering the same or similar products and services. In other words, providing good customer service has become a key consideration when it comes to customer loyalty and retention, both of which, ultimately,  increase revenue and  profitability.

Many companies still neglect the customer service experience, despite clear ties between good customer experiences, customer retention, and profits. For this reason, a majority of customers are still reporting regular dissatisfaction with the buying experience. With this in mind, it stands to reason that if you improve your customers’ buying experience, you can pull ahead of competitors and set your company apart from others, while also increasing revenue and profits. To provide evidence that improving the customer buying experience works, take a look at the following statistics.

1. Seven in ten (70%) of consumers say they’ve spent more money to do business with a company that delivers great service. (Forbes)
2. After a positive customer experience, consumers are 3.5 times more likely to purchase again from the business, and 5.1 times more likely to recommend the business to others. (Qualtrics)
3. It costs between six to seven times more to acquire a new customer than it costs to keep the customers you already have. (American Express)
4. A 5% increase in customer retention results in anywhere from a 25 to 95% increase in profits. (American Express)
5. Eight in ten (80%) of people regularly have negative experiences with customer service. (Qualtrics)

The Customer Service Industry

Taking a broad view of the customer service industry, the customer experience management market was valued at around $17 billion in 2023, while the customer service-specific software industry was valued at around $10 billion. Both of these are forecasted to grow to over $50 billion by 2030 as companies focus on improving their cross-selling and up-selling, customer retention, and customer satisfaction rates.

6. The global customer experience management market size was valued at $16.91 billion in 2023, and is expected to grow to $52.54 billion by 2030. (Fortune Business Insights)
7. The customer service software industry was valued at $10.5 billion in 2021 and is expected to grow to $58.1 billion by 2030. (Acumen Research and Consulting)
8. The industries with the highest expectations for good customer service were healthcare, banking, and restaurants. (PwC)
9. The top three reasons companies invested in customer experience were to improve cross-selling and up-selling (42%), to improve customer retention (33%), and to improve customer satisfaction (32%). (SuperOffice)

Customer Service Employees

Customer service employees tend to work at contact centers. To meet growing customer service demands, service organizations are planning to outsource their agent needs and raise starting wages. Though other industries are pushing for a return-to-office policy, contact centers are allowing agents to remain at home, likely as an additional job benefit to entice workers. Call center agents also prefer to work for private businesses rather than for large, public companies.

10. To retain qualified support agents, 86% of contact center leaders say they expect to raise starting wages in the next two years. (Deloitte)
11. With growing capacity needs, 58% of service organizations outsource at least some portion of their needed agent capacity. That number is expected to grow to 64% in the next two years. (Deloitte)
12. Though most other industries have implemented return-to-office mandates post-Covid-19, 69% of surveyed contact centers still have a work-from-home program in place, and 73% expect to continue to have a work-from-home program for the next two years. (Deloitte)
13. Most call center agents (64%) prefer to work at private companies over public companies (31%). A minority preferred to work in government (3%) or education (2%) facilities. (Zippia)

Customer Expectations

Both companies and consumers agree that customer service has been lacking in recent years. Some popular complaints in customer service include things such as a lack of communication between employees, service speed, lack of a human connection, and lack of improvement in how customers are served. However, when compared to certain other parts of the world, as the following statistics show, American consumers are quite lenient towards companies with poor customer service.

14. Tolerance for poor customer service varies by geographic region: though about half (49%) of Latin American consumers reported they would stop interacting with a beloved brand after one bad experience, US and global respondents were more likely (59% and 47%) to report that they would only stop interacting with a brand after several bad experiences. (PwC)
15. In a 2022 survey, 88% of service reps agreed that customers had higher expectations for service than they did in previous years. Additionally, 79% said that customers were more informed than they were in the past. (HubSpot)
16. When they talk to employees, 70% of customers expect anyone they interact with to have full context on their issue. (Zendesk)
17. Seven out of ten (72%) consumers want immediate service. (Zendesk)
18. In a survey of US consumers, 64% expressed that they felt companies had lost touch with the human element of the customer experience. A majority (71%) would rather interact with a human rather than a chatbot or other automated process. (PwC)
19. In a 2022 survey, 63% of customers said companies need to get better at listening to their feedback; 62% said businesses need to care more about them, and 60% said they would buy more if businesses treated them better. (Qualtrics)

Customer Service Best Practices

Based on customer sentiment, the most important practices for improving your business’s customer experience include such things as improving response time, training customer service representatives to maintain positive attitudes, and removing information silos. Customer service reps report that AI can help meet these goals by handling routine interactions while allowing them (the human reps) to respond to support tickets faster. The following statistics attest to the veracity of these findings.

20. In a survey of customer retention factors, 60% of customers cited that quick rep response time and solutions were the number one deciding factor driving them to make a repeat purchase. (HubSpot)
21. When choosing a brand, 54% of customers say fast responses are critical. (Freshworks)
22. In the same survey, the second most influential service factor for inspiring customer loyalty was an engaged and enthusiastic customer service representative. (HubSpot)
23. Integration of customer service software systems with the rest of the company’s tech stack plays a major part in helping a company reach their goals – 48% of service professionals with a connected, all-in-one solution beat their 2022 goals and 44% of professionals with “mostly integrated” tools met their goals, as opposed to only 34% of professionals with “mostly/entirely disconnected” tools. (HubSpot)
24. Nearly 80% of American consumers named speed, convenience, knowledgeable help, and friendly service as the most important elements of a positive customer experience. (PwC)
25. When surveyed about the usefulness of AI, 84% of customer service reps who use AI say it makes it easier for them to respond to tickets. (HubSpot)

Personalization in Service

A growing expectation and trend in customer service is personalization, or tailoring communications for each customer’s unique profile and preferences. Especially among younger generations, personalization is becoming a necessity for gaining customer loyalty.

Using the following statistics as supporting evidence, ways to improve personalization include implementing AI service tools and increasing customer support agents’ access to tools and data. 

26. Seven out of ten (71%) consumers expect personalization from brands and businesses, and 76% get frustrated when they don’t receive any. (McKinsey & Co.)
27. Companies that grow faster drive more than 40% of their revenue from personalization than slower-growing companies. (McKinsey & Co.)
28. Younger generations are more likely to continue shopping with retailers who offer a personalized experience: 96% and 97% of Gen Zers and Millennials respectively, as opposed to 88% of the rest of the population. (Elastic)
29. Sixty-four percent (64%) of customer service reps who use AI say it makes their correspondences more personalized. (HubSpot)
30. In a 2023 survey, 74% of support agents said that having access to more tools and data would give them more opportunities to personalize interactions. (Zendesk)

Customer Service Channels and Software

As this article was being written, the most popular customer service channels included phone, digital channels such as social media, and email. In particular, consumers were showing a stronger preference for contacting companies through the direct messaging features on social media. Even though this is true, social media companies still tend to rely on the account’s marketer to respond to customer support questions, and this illustrates an area of needed improvement in social-media-based customer service.

Other growing tools used to improve customer service are conversational chatbots, cloud-based service software, and interactive voice response (IVR) technology. However, since the telephone remains the most popular service channel, a large portion of companies are investing in improving their phone-based customer service in contact centers.

31. The top three communication channels customers preferred when resolving customer service issues were 42% phone; 38% digital channels, and 20% email. (Statista)
32. In a survey of more than 120 consumers, 64% said they regularly use social media messaging such as Instagram Messenger, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, or X (formerly Twitter) DMs to contact service teams. (HubSpot)
33. Of businesses that offered customer service through social media DMs, only 43% had a customer service rep respond to the messages. Forty-one percent asked the account marketer to handle messaging and escalate major issues, 13% used an automated chatbot, and 3% used some other method. (HubSpot)
34. In a 2018 survey, 57% of business leaders said that conversational chatbots delivered a large ROI for minimal investment. (Accenture)
35. To improve scalability, companies are moving their customer service software to the cloud. In the past two years, the number of organizations that have moved analytics, customer relationship management (CRM), knowledge management, interaction recording, and workforce management systems to the cloud has increased by approximately 50%. (Deloitte)
36. By 2025, it’s projected that 77% of contact centers will have cloud-based interactive voice response (IVR) technology. (Deloitte)
37. Currently, in 2023, 81% of contact centers use voice/text analytics to improve customer service. Among those centers, 65% use the capability for customer insights and retention, quality risk identification, and call driver analysis, while 40% use it for call quality assessment. (Deloitte)

Challenges in Customer Service

For customer service agents, the top challenges they faced included things such as dealing with upset customers and not having enough time in their day. While not much can be done about the former, the latter complaint indicates that companies looking to improve their customer support capabilities should focus on time-saving tools.

Alternatively, customers tell a different story, with the top three service complaints being unfriendly service, bad employee attitudes, and an untrustworthy company. In other words, another crucial area for customer service improvement is interpersonal skills training for service agents.

38. In a 2022 survey, the second-highest challenge as a survey agent was not having enough time in the day. This was more prevalent in low-growth companies, where 51% of agents cited it as an issue, as opposed to only 43% of respondents from high-growth companies. The top challenge, of course, was dealing with upset customers. (HubSpot)
39. In a 2018 survey, the top three factors driving customers away from a business in the U.S. were unfriendly service, bad employee attitudes, and an untrusted company. These three factors were the same on a global scale, but with a minor shift: a bad attitude was the top factor, with unfriendly service and an untrusted company coming after a bad attitude. (PwC)

AI in Customer Service

Though AI can help support agents prioritize and respond to more tickets, consumers are still hesitant to trust AI. Furthermore, customers still express a desire to receive human empathy in their customer service.

In other words, while AI can and should be used to improve internal customer service processes in a business, it should be used in tandem with human agents to support them rather than to replace them. 

40. The four biggest benefits of AI in customer service include making customer service available 24/7 (36%), saving time by automating manual tasks (31%), responding to customer support requests faster (30%), and handling smaller tasks so reps can focus on more complex issues (28%). (HubSpot)
41. The three most popular use cases for service AI or automation include routing customer requests to reps (29%), collecting and analyzing customer feedback (28%), and enabling chatbots or self-service tools to answer customer questions (26%). (HubSpot)
42. When asked which AI chatbot consumers saw themselves using the most, a majority (52%) answered with Google Bard, 27% with ChatGPT, and 20% with Bing. (HubSpot).
43. In a survey of over 600 consumers, consumers were split equally in trusting AI-generated content. Thirty-six percent actively distrusted it, 38% neither trusted nor distrusted it, and only 26% trusted AI-generated content. (HubSpot)
44. Globally, an average of 75% of survey respondents indicated that they wanted to interact with a real person more as technology improves. In the United States specifically, 82% of respondents expressed a preference for real-person interactions. (PwC)

Future Trends

Beyond 2023, business leaders plan to expand service channels to reach more customers while optimizing support by funneling all customers and resources into key channels, a process called right-channeling. Companies are also investing more into chatbots and AI in customer service.

Businesses that cater to younger generations would be wise to focus on their mobile customer experiences, which is a priority for Gen Zers. As Gen Zers are quicker to form brand loyalties, capturing their attention today could guarantee you a strong customer base for decades to come.

45. In a 2023 survey of contact center leaders, 69% say they plan to expand their service channels and add new service channels in the next two years. (Deloitte)
46. Despite offering many different support channels, it becomes infeasible to provide the same level of support across all channels. That’s why 55% of companies surveyed use right-channeling, guiding customers to the most efficient channel for a specific need. Of those who use right-channeling, 75% redirect customers to the channel best suited to support their interaction intent, while the remaining 25% redirect customers to the channel with the shortest wait time or lowest cost. (Deloitte)
47. In a 2023 report, 68% of business leaders already had plans to increase their investments in AI for customer service. (Zendesk)
48. By 2027, chatbots are expected to become the primary customer service channel for roughly a quarter of organizations. (Gartner)
49. Almost two-thirds (63%) of surveyed Gen Zers would pay more for a better mobile customer experience, as compared to only half (54%) of the general population. (PwC)
50. When compared to 24% of the general population, 40% of Gen Zers feel more loyal to brands in 2018 than they did the year prior. In other words, Gen Zers are quicker to form loyalties to brands. (PwC)

Conclusion

Though not as illustrious as marketing or sales, customer service is proving to be a key area of growth for businesses, representing a chance to add value per purchase, develop a loyal customer base, and create a stellar brand reputation. As technologies and customer expectations shift, however, it can be hard for companies to stay on top of changes in the customer service industry. 

It is our hope, at MakingThatSale.com, that this guide has provided you with much of the knowledge and insight you need to make strong data-based decisions on how to improve your customer service offerings. As always, it is our goal to help you serve your customers well, so that you can improve business and profitability while setting your company apart in a positive way, for years to come.