Our blog

Using video in Customer Experience: Your organisation’s choice?

With nearly 1 in 5 of us using Skype and Facetime regularly according to Ofcom, what are the opportunities to apply video to customer contact? Using digital ethnography to study the use of video in customer service, and hearing executives talk about their experience...

Getting the most out of VoC programmes: what do key trends tell us?

We are all experts on customer experience now. Or are we? At Davies Hickman, we believe that using the right data, the latest digital research techniques and visualisation tools is the best basis for sound decision-making on customer-related issues. We advise our...

The averagisation of customer service

Big businesses have rightly been focusing on delivering what customers want over the past 10 years. But their efforts have resulted in ‘the averagisation of customer service’. Now could be the time for leaders to ‘buck the trend’and differentiate their organisations...

Workplace challenges in 2014

According to the ONS’s press release Labour Market Statistics on the 18th December 2013 the employment rate for those aged from 16 to 64 for August to October 2013 was 72.0%, up 0.4 percentage points from May to July 2013 in the UK. There were 30.09 million people in...

New Regional Banks are you ready? On your marks, get set, go!

The big banks have an oligopoly in the market, the results from the Edelman’s Trust Index overshadow the current industry, but more significantly the regulators have recently relaxed the rules for entrepreneurs to set up new local banks. As we move from economic...

Facebook for marketing: Getting out what you put in?

Facebook has over 1 bn users and some organisations find that their Facebook pages receive more views than their own websites. But how typical is this? We’ve taken a look at how different brands are using Facebook to attract customers. The theory is well known:...

Evolving strategy and service, via social media

2013 is all about real time. As faster technologies fuel our desires for belonging, sharing information and knowledge we will demand not just access, but immediate access. That includes solutions to our complaints directed at organisations which have failed to satisfy...

Unified Communications and the Collaboration Paradox

A recent global survey involving 1,000 executives working in large enterprises across the main industry sectors around the world uncovers new attitudinal and behavioural factors. It highlights how Global Executives from various influential functional groups such as...

Consumers are demanding better card payment security

PCI DSS impacts local and global enterprises whose contact centre agents take card pay-ments over the phone using in-house and/or outsourced call centres, outsourced IT, out-sourced agents and home workers. PCI compliance and data protection in contact centres are hot...

Innovation in service

Last week’s Customer Engagement Day (run by Jon Snow’s Director’s Club) covered many issues which are on-going: integrating channels, engaging employees, measuring customer experience and reducing contact demand. But, there were signs of the changing shape of the...

Youbiquity Finance

Davies Hickman Partners Ltd has recently completed international consumer research into communication preferences with financial service providers. It strongly endorses a ubiquitous approach to the availability of financial services across fragmenting channels. After...

The Big Switch – How customer service is becoming smart

For many years, organisations have tried to reduce customer service interactions or avoid them completely. They’ve used a range of strategies including limiting accessibility, cheap sourcing, increasing self-service, deploying lean service principles and getting...

The future of thought leadership for B2B Marketing

Thought leadership – e-papers, presentations, white papers, webinars, mobile content etc – commissioned by B2B technology and service brands has succeeded in engaging prospects away from the ‘hard-sales’ interaction. As a forum between supplier and customer, using a...

Autonomous Customer

We've recently completed some independent consumer research into multi-channel with a representative sample of 500 online consumers in the US and 500 in the UK. The theme of the results is the 'Autonomous Customer', a new trend in consumer behaviour which challenges...

Trust Flutters

Trust Flutters: What Price Is Trust? Declining trust among consumers and citizens for many private and public organisations is a key trend as the economic and political situation changes. What is more, the ‘hardball’ cost cutting strategies of some organisations are...

Generation Y, Web Generation

The Emerging Buyer Our research for Cisco and JamIP suggests that Generation Y (19-25-year-olds) have experience of buying from most industry sectors; they have quickly become experienced consumers. Even the younger Web Generation (13-18-year-olds) have a surprising...

Channel applications are fragmenting rather than converging

The design of the iPhone, and now the iPad, has taken converging communication channels to a new level. With fantastic usability, simplicity and capability to do e-mails, make calls, update social networking sites, display the newspapers or show TV on the iPlayer...

People's feedback, social media and customer contact

The core ethos of social media is that of creativity and originality. Communicate using your own dialogue, images, video and symbols. As a customer, if you're unhappy about a company's service, then make a song or even post a cartoon, but don't be formulaic. The main...