SPONSORED EDITORIAL: Is your casino customer service a cost centre or a loyalty driver?
With customer service playing a key role in a firm's ability to retain customers, David Coleman, of etruvian consulting, examines how the online casino industry is performing in this regard
At etruvian consulting we recently released our latest report examining the quality of the customer service at a number of the biggest names in the online casino industry. In this article we will look in brief at what trends the results highlighted and what this means for customer experience at the respective casinos.
Self-help that isn’t that helpful
The quality of the self-help and FAQ sections on many of the casino websites were observed to be of relatively low quality. Often there were very few topics outside of depositing addressed or the structures were poorly thought out. Primarily it was the multiproduct operators that appeared to manage these knowledge repositories effectively. This could be due in part to them gaining the greatest benefits as they would have significantly higher inbound support query volumes.
Failing to provide the customer with the ability to solve their own problems can lead to frustration and a negative experience with the brand. Even with live chat being a common contact channel on offer, many customers will retain the opinion that “quickly checking the website” is a more efficient approach for them to fix smaller problems.
Optimising these self-help sections, therefore, represent a definite opportunity for many casino operators.
|
Operator |
Overall |
|
32Red |
8.8 |
|
InterCasino |
8.2 |
|
Betsson |
8.1 |
|
Bet365 |
7.9 |
|
Bwin.Party |
7.7 |
|
Casino770 |
7.6 |
|
MrGreen |
7.6 |
|
Ladbrokes |
7.4 |
|
BetFred |
7.1 |
|
Betway |
7.1 |
|
PaddyPower |
7.0 |
|
ClubWorld |
7.0 |
|
888Casino |
6.1 |
|
William Hill |
6.1 |
|
3Dice |
5.8 |
|
Betfair |
5.1 |
Sorry, your bonus has expired
For the majority of operators and types of query, the level of product knowledge displayed by the support teams was very positive. However, there was consistently one piece of information missed off by many support teams; how long the customer had to clear a bonus and what happened thereafter.
When looked at from a customer experience perspective, this can have a highly detrimental effect as a new customer feels cheated when their “amazing bonus” expires before they can clear it. Will this customer then leave and go to a competitor? Probably, but this time they will ask how long they have before it expires and not suffer the same negative experience again.
Hi and welcome, I suppose, to our casino
The audits highlighted that many casino support teams make little effort to provide a friendly or personal introduction to their emails, even the first contact. With only a few rare exceptions, the common phrases we saw were “Thanks for your email.” More commonly, however, there was no such introduction or “This is the X Casino Support Team”. Similar issues were also observed regularly with the signatures and exit text from the support teams. Some signatures were up to triple the size of the actual support message itself.
These frequently standardised and largely impersonal sections of text add very little value to the customer and their support experience. These sections could be used to set the tone of the communication, provide reassurances or add a personalised greeting, however this occurred infrequently.
Welcome to deposit chat
The assessment highlighted that live chat is almost universally considered to be just a means to facilitate deposits. This was made apparent by many operators only offering live chat services to customers on the registration screen or immediately after, often saying within the first few lines “Ready to deposit?!”.
One of the more notable experiences included being cut off by a support representative; ironically whilst typing to ask for help with making our deposit, after first having our initial, non-deposit related question ignored. Such incidents occurred with alarming frequency, highlighting that many live chat representatives have their performance or incentives based upon a deposit quantity metric.
Increasing conversion rates is a commercial necessity; however the approach taken by many operators makes their live chat significantly less effective as a conversion tool than it should be.
The audits highlighted that there are opportunities for most operators to optimise their approach in engaging the customer, creating a positive experience and thus making the customer actually want to come back again.
For further information, please visit our website www.etruvianconsulting.com