The CFI Group has released their annual report on call center satisfaction and the results suggest that social media may be providing a platform for customers to vent frustrations and leave them behind. The report also reveals that private sector call center satisfaction is on the decline, while government call center satisfaction has remained the same.

Terry Redding, director of development and delivery for CFI Group comments on what they found:

“What we are seeing is that, if you have a bad experience, you post it once on Facebook for all to see and then you’re done with it,”

“By the same token, we are seeing good experiences posted in the same way. In fact, we’ve observed that positive comments generally outweigh negative ones almost as a rule.”

“This is the first year since we’ve fielded that study that we’ve seen a decrease in overall score on the private sector side,”

“We feel the drop is due to an increasing number of easier calls being offloaded to self-service channels like the Web, leaving the more complex cases going to the call centers.”

Overall it seems positive experience is outweighing negative feedback. Perhaps people are just better at venting their frustration on social media in a constructive way. I think it is also worth noting that consumers are finding more efficient ways to resolve problems rather than enduring the long wait time typically involved with contacting an organization via call center.

Here are some highlights from this years report:

* On the private-sector side, property and casualty insurance call centers led all sectors at 80, in spite of a one-point drop from last year.

* Call centers that can provide first-call-resolution and minimize call transfers score much higher. This suggests that technology that empowers call representatives may be a good investment.