Contactability is key to customer retention but the motor industry is falling short of customer expectations, according to a recent poll of 2,000 consumers.

Emerging towards the bottom of an already poor-performing group, almost a fifth (19%) of automotive consumers felt contactabilty was poor within the sector, according to research from Yonder Digital. 

It canvassed 2,000 UK consumers, asking whether they felt that companies in a variety of sectors were easy to get in touch with and efficient at getting queries resolved rapidly and effectively.

It emerged that automotive firms are amongst others at the bottom of the list with 24% of consumers rating the ease of contact standard as ‘good’ but only 11% as excellent and 19% as poor. 

Today’s consumers are in fact increasingly accustomed to swift query response, across multiple channels, but the research results show that the automotive sector is failing to meet these taxing demands.

This is a particularly worrying considering that previous Yonder research showed that 81% of consumers simply take their business elsewhere if their queries aren't answered quickly and effectively by a company.

This is why car brands that continue to overlook their levels of ‘contactability’ are taking a gamble.

Yonder Digital Group’s chief executive Chris Robinson (pictured) said: “Customers have individual preferences for contacting companies, which is why businesses lose out when they don’t offer a range of touch points.

“At crucial moments in the journey to purchase, many customers will look for a live agent, particularly for urgent or non-standard queries.

“Businesses that fail to provide support at these critical stages risk losing customers to competitors with superior support services.

"As the results show, a large proportion of companies are still falling well below the mark, suggesting there is a long way to go for UK industries to catch up with modern expectations.”