Freshchat Benchmark Report: How companies are mastering the art of customer conversation

As companies expand their investments in digital transformation, they’re banking on big returns, especially in customer experience (CX). As a new Freshworks report shows, many of the payoffs of digital CX are won or lost during the complex sequence of customer touchpoints, interactions, and conversations—some deftly handled by human agents working with real-time digital support, others offloaded to chatbots powered by machine intelligence.

The Freshchat Conversational Support Benchmark Report 2023 looks at the art and science of customer conversations in the digital era. Through survey data, the report shows how companies are using Freshchat to improve six key performance indicators widely used to measure customer satisfaction:

1. First assign time

2. First response time

3. Resolution time

4. First contact resolution

5. CSAT score (customer satisfaction)

6. Bot deflection

The report draws from anonymized and aggregated metadata from 10,000+ active Freshchat users, covering 260 million interactions between agents, bots, and customers. Surveyed companies represent more than 25 industries and 90 countries. The report also highlights the voice of our customers from a survey of over 650 CX leaders.

Here are some key takeaways:

Closing the chatbot gap in ticket deflection

Companies are increasingly turning to digital tools and resources—chatbots, self-service portals, and knowledge-base articles—to quickly handle or automate some of the most common customer questions. The process, known as "ticket deflection," helps companies resolve a majority of customer issues without relying on human agents.

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Healthcare companies, the report found, are using chatbots to deflect 71% of customer queries while maintaining healthy CSAT scores and resolution times—the highest rate among all sectors. Yet only 7% of businesses that used Freshchat in 2022 have deployed chatbots, pointing to the dramatic potential for most companies if they can make the transition.

The need for speed: Clocking response and resolution times

Over 67% of our B2C customers say quick resolution is the top expectation from service teams in 2023. Here’s how the process breaks down:

• In the top 15 industry categories analyzed in the report, agents using Freshchat responded to a customer's first interaction within an hour. In 80% of those categories, however, agents responded within 10 minutes.

• The “first assign time”—the average time taken to assign a conversation to a support agent or a group of agents—happened instantly for nearly half of the industry categories.

• Resolution time, on the other hand, depends on the complexity of the issue; it varied significantly, from 28 minutes to 11 hours.

“These are complex scenarios to plan for, which is why executives seek automation tools to help map the right approach to the right situation,” says Colin Crowley, CX advisor at Freshworks.

Expanding multichannel support

Businesses today are adapting to the preferences of their customers and communicating with them via their favorite messaging apps. The channel is selected based on customer preferences, often reflecting what is the most popular in their country or region of operation.

Among the users of Freshchat, 22.7% of businesses connect with their customers over WhatsApp. Mobile app is the next most popular channel (20.40%), followed by Facebook Messenger (17.64%).

Boosting customer satisfaction scores (CSAT)

According to the report, 58.9% of B2C respondents and 65.2% of B2B customers rank CSAT as the top key performance indicator (KPI) they want to improve in 2023.

The survey also asked B2C customers what defines excellent customer service. Easily accessible support and quick resolution topped their list of key attributes. Conversational support can support those outcomes through messaging channels and chatbots.

The benchmarks and metrics revealed in the Freshchat Conversational Support Benchmark Report 2023 show how a two-way conversation has become irreplaceable for B2B and B2C customer service.

“With customers expecting faster responses and messaging being one of the most preferred channels, a conversation-first approach combined with AI/ML capabilities is the best way forward,” says Chakravarthy Srinivasan, senior director of customer support at Freshworks.

To gain deeper insights into conversational support and how to implement it in your organization, download the complete Freshchat Conversational Support Benchmark Report 2023 for free.

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