In 2015, I wrote an article called “Why Relying Only On Reactive Customer Service Is No Longer Good Enough.” In it, I quoted a couple of pieces of research that found that anywhere from 25-60% of “all inbound calls to a contact centre could largely be attributed to a customer not being able to find what they were looking for on a company’s website.”

That article and data sources are more than six years old.

Since then, while we have seen the development and implementation of new digital resources and self-service channels, customers still complain about websites and how helpful they are.

Earlier this year, research conducted by Heap, a digital insights platform, found that 43% of consumers think most websites are not designed with the end-user in mind. This is in sharp contrast to the 95% of product teams surveyed in the same research piece that said it’s “somewhat” or “very easy” for users to navigate and use their site.

I’ve always been an advocate for the idea that the little and often overlooked things can have the biggest impact on a customer’s experience. 
One of those little things that are key to helping customers find the information they are looking for and making a site easy to navigate is its search function.

So, I was delighted to hear recently that Visionary Marketing, on behalf of Yext, an AI-enabled search technology company, was conducting a piece of research amongst senior UK and French marketers that would explore the role and impact of on-site search on a customer’s experience. I was even more delighted when Yann Gourvennec, the CEO of Visionary Marketing, asked me to get involved.

Here are the headline findings (UK marketers):

• 70+% are convinced that Website search is fairly or very strategic.
• 63+% think that visitors are using the “Website search” function of their company’s website(s) to find information.
• 45+% think their visitors are fairly or very frequently frustrated with “Website search” results.
• 94+% think that their visitors are resorting to other means when the quality of the results that they get from the Website search feature of their website is deemed poor or unsatisfactory.
• 79+% think a better search experience will improve visitors’ level of trust in their company.
• 70+% think a better search experience will have a positive impact on a visitor’s propensity to buy from their company.
• Paradoxically, however, our research also found that over 81% of UK marketers find their website search engines fairly or very satisfactory.

You can read the full findings here: PDF Document.

On the back of the research, an online roundtable to explore and discuss these findings was organised.

The panel assembled consisted of:

• Nico Beukes, Senior Vice President at Yext @yext,
• Yann Gourvennec, CEO of Visionary Marketing @ygourven,
• myself, and
• A series of influential voices in the CX and digital marketing space
  • Claire Boscq-Scott @cbusyqueenbee,
  • Clare Muscutt @claremuscutt,
  • Elise Quevedo @elisequevedo,
  • Naeem Arif @NAConsultingLtd and
  • Tim Hughes @Timothy_Hughes

You can watch the full discussion here:

It was a fascinating discussion that covered the role on-site website search plays in customer experience, a series of personal examples of how website search helped/hindered each of the panellists, their impressions and the implications of the results, an exploration of why marketers are doing little about search and what that is costing them as well as some advice for marketers if they are to make search a help rather than a hindrance to a customers experience.

The short summary? Brands know that the most important go-to source that customers use to help them find information and locate products and services is an online search engine. Therefore, it is no surprise that they spend a lot of time and resources working with the major search engines to make sure that they can be found and that customers can find what they are looking for. However, searching for information and products using a search engine is only part of a customers journey, and while that part may be optimised, it is a big mistake not to optimise their own site’s search function.

To illustrate this, I searched for ‘help’ and ‘customer service’ on the website of one of Europe’s largest fashion retailers and got nothing useful. In fact, my search for ‘customer service’ produced ~60 results, most of which were white trainers (sneakers)!

However, if I searched for ‘XXXXXXX (brand name) customer service’ on Google, the first result is that brand’s Contact and Help Information page. With a phone number!

Do you see the problem?

Marketing and customer experience leaders, get your act together.

Note:  All of the insights from the discussion will be combined with the research results to produce a whitepaper that will be available here shortly.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay