The Need for Speed: Customer communications and expectations | Pest Management Professional

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Technology is changing consumer behavior and the sales process for home services providers. Customers are used to receiving five-star service, day and night. In its 2019 Customer Experience Management Study, research firm Gartner found that 64 percent of people believe customer experience is more important than pricing.

According to Lehi, Utah-based Slingshot’s internal research based on its national database, home services businesses, including pest control, receive up to 25 percent of their calls after 5 p.m. or on weekends. Yet only 20 percent of unanswered calls result in voicemails. Customers don’t wait to leave a voicemail; they hang up and call the next company, and the next, until someone answers.

This is precisely why Slingshot created Central Inbox, the technology that allows Slingshot clients to meet customers in their preferred communication channels — phone, email, web form submission, text or live chat on the website. Slingshot focuses on balancing speed, quality and technology to provide excellent customer experiences for their clients and their customers. As a result, Slingshot customers have reported an increase in residential sales of up to 40 percent.

With customer expectations higher than ever, the time to update the ways your business communicates with prospects and customers is now. Consider the additional findings Slingshot collected regarding national communication trends:

• 70 percent to 90 percent of communication is over the phone.
• 25 percent of all sales opportunities take place outside of regular business hours.
• Fewer than one in five callers will leave a voicemail.
• 90 percent of first-time voicemails are never returned.
• 50 percent of online visitors will immediately leave your site when phone is the only available communication channel.
• 60 percent will hang up after just 60 seconds on hold.
• There is a 10-times decrease in contact rates after just five minutes of waiting.
• 75 percent of people expect online queries to be dealt with on the same day, while half of them expect a reply within just one hour.
• 90 percent of texts from businesses are read within three minutes.
• Nine out of 10 customers would text businesses if it were available.
• One in three customers has sent a text to a business number that was not text-enabled, so the message was never received.
• 75 percent of people believe it takes too long to contact a live agent when they call a company.

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