It's been predicted that up to 75% of all customer service calls will be made out of loneliness by 2026. What can organisations do to ensure they're combatting this challenge in a sincere and effective manner?

In a global Statista study conducted in November 2021, it was revealed that roughly a third of all adults experience feelings of loneliness in their day to day lives.

Driven by the perfect storm of aging populations, the decline of communities, the rise of digital and the coronavirus pandemic, loneliness has become a topic high on the global agenda as the effects are so stark: loneliness is scientifically proven to increase mortality, drive cognitive deterioration and negatively impact all manner of behavioural, psychological and physiological conditions.

CCA’s CEO, Anne Marie Forsyth was asked to contribute to this article on MyCustomer.com and commented, “Since March 2020, the CCA has been tracking data from leading private and public brands in the UK with millions of customers. Call volumes have increased significantly, across all sectors. There has also been a significant acceleration in digital and automation uptake by customers, but many continue to struggle with the complexity.

“The degree to which loneliness is driving calls is interesting because it is certainly connected. Just about every brand in the CCA network has reported a significant increase in the degree of complexity of calls. At times callers are presenting a need to chat and there have been instances where callers are suicidal. Calls are statistically proving to be much longer, preventing a real challenge to organisations struggling to recruit experienced workers, also leading to frustration and pent-up anger by customers who are forced to wait for longer periods than usual.”

It's a topic that’s also recently come up in our kick-off Best Practice Forum for 2022 highlighting concerns businesses across all sectors face in dealing with increasingly challenging contact from customers.

Navigating your service operation through turbulent times is not for the feint hearted. Understanding how your operation is performing is critical. Find out more here about CCA’s Operational Review and Global Standard which gives you an independent and in-depth temperature check of how you are performing today so you can develop for tomorrow. 

Read the full article on MyCustomer here.