Research On Customer Service – Studies Of Consumer Behavior
If you want to make effective decisions about the levels of customer service your customers require to help your company be successful, you have two choices: You can read second, third, fourth, and fifth hand interpretations of consumer research, and be at the mercy of people who probably know even less than you, or you can search out the source material — the original research, and draw your own conclusions.
In this section we’ll try to pass on actual customer service research, but be aware that a lot of the studies that are reliable, and well done are no longer available free of charge. That’s unfortunate. The best most trustworthy (and most complicated) research ends up published in very expensive professional journals.
We’ve included a wide variety of research based findings. Where possible we provide links and summaries to actual studies, but more often we’ve linked to abstracts, and also reports about the reports, sometimes published in more popular publications.
Also beware of studies that are sponsored by, or published by companies that sell services and consulting in the customer service niche, since they have strong vested interests in having their research come out the right way. This is particularly the case with research linking social media and customer satisfaction.
Important: : To make informed decisions from research you need to be able to make sense of it, and that requires basic research skills.
