Customer service is more important today than ever. A company’s ability to resolve issues quickly, conveniently and with little effort from customers has become as essential as product, quality and price.

Over the past few years, we’ve seen companies de-prioritize email as messaging platforms, live chat and even voice assistants like Amazon’s Alexa emerged as ways to engage in 1:1 conversations and resolve issues. While companies funneled more and more resources into emerging support channels, the change in consumer preferences have not been as swift. Email remains the preferred digital channel for support.

But the problem remains: it is challenging to create a great customer support experience with email. We found that 70% of companies never respond to an email.

In this groundbreaking report, we’ve analyzed the availability of email support, responsiveness and when given the chance, which retailers go above and beyond to delight customers. Here are some of the most important findings that CX leaders need to know:

Here are a few highlights of the customer service statistics that all CX leaders needs to know:

31% of customers expect responses in one hour or less, but the average email response time is nearly 36 hours
Only 56% of companies have an easy-to-access email address
Customers are 8X more likely to get a response on a weekday than a weekend
When given the chance to go above and beyond and fulfill a special request, 83% of companies failed to deliver

Meeting customer expectations is no longer optional. The first step to transforming support is understanding the gaps between customer expectations and reality.

Customer Service Benchmark Report: Retail – Edition 2020.