70% Of Consumers Use Messaging And Social Media To Source Products And Services

Organisations that fail to adapt to the new messaging culture risk falling behind and losing customers, that’s according to new international research from BT and Cisco.

The research, The Digital Customer 2017 — Chat, tap, talk: eight key trends to transform your digital customer experience, is based on an independent survey of 5000 consumers across ten countries. Its findings suggest that a growing number of consumers internationally find it easier to deal with organisations via messaging and social media, a trend driven by a surge in their personal use of apps such as WhatsApp.

The research found that almost half (48 per cent) of respondents get frustrated if text-based “chat” is not available when dealing with organisations (rising to 58 per cent in Singapore) while 70 per cent of those aged 18-34 years said they are sourcing more and more of their products and services via social media.