Just 40% of consumers say companies frequently or always meet their service expectations, according to Accenture's Customer Satisfaction Survey of more than 5,000 people in 12 countries. That's down from 45% in 2008 and 53% in 2007, the consulting firm says.

Accenture’s research indicates that consumers are more demanding than ever and that many companies are not keeping pace, resulting in the highest level of switching due to poor customer experiences ever detected by this annual survey.

Customer expectations center around two key areas of service: timeliness and expertise. Over 74% of the respondents want to be able to obtain service more easily and 66% want faster service, with over 84% preferring to call for assistance compared to 65% by email and a mere 20% by on-line chat.

67% of the global respondents expect their customer service representatives to be more knowledgeable and almost as many find it frustrating to have to repeat the same information to multiple customer service agents. Customers expect workers who are polite and friendly, knowledgeable and well-informed, and who already know the customer’s history (why he or she is calling, for example). Yet approximately one-third of consumers said they are dissatisfied with agents’ knowledge of their history with the company, which compromises the service experience.

Unlike most of our competitors, this is where Tribute excels. We offer timely, knowledgeable customer service through a variety of options. We still offer “old fashioned” customer service – we answer the phone! We don’t require our customers to email in requests and wait several hours for a call back, although if you’d rather do it that way, that’s fine too.

Our customer service reps know our customers and their unique business requirements. Our reps serve internships at customer sites and get to know our customers through our User Group meetings and Program Review sessions. And since we’re not an amalgam of software products built through mergers and acquisitions and therefore marketed to a wide industry base, we concentrate on our core niche and ensure that we stay ahead of the curve in our customer’s industry.

Our customers are happy with our service and we have the stats to back it up. A daily random sample of support calls generates an email to rate our service and solicit feedback. We analyze our stats each month to ensure the quality of our support remains high and customer concerns are addressed immediately. And as you can see from the graph below, our customer satisfaction rating is over 95% in all seven areas measured with an overall customer satisfaction rating of nearly 98%, unheard of in the rest of our industry.

Accenture believes that their findings show how imperative it is that enterprises finally leave behind the “one-size-fits-all” approach to customers and provide service based on the expectations and requirements of individual and closely understood customer segments.

At Tribute, Inc. we know that to be true - that the key to capturing and retaining valuable business relationships is providing the customer service experience our customers want and expect.

Source: Accenture 2009 Global Consumer Satisfaction Report