Customer queries to retailers and logistics partners increased by over 47% in Black Friday week (Monday - Friday 24 November, vs same week in 2016), according to customer communication platform Gnatta.

Gnatta, which manages customer interactions for retailers including ASOS, AO and Missguided, saw a record number of customers contacting retailers to handle everything from from stock enquiries to fashion advice.

Increasing numbers of these interactions happened across webchat (38%), a shift from last year when social media accounted for nearly 50% of all queries and webchat for 26%. Social media accounted for 37% of queries this year. This points to a shift towards faster resolution, as customers increasingly expect to receive an immediate response.

Initial estimates indicate that this year’s Black Friday was set to beat all records, with IMRG predicting that sales would be up 9% on 2016.

Gnatta’s figures indicate that final sales tallies will be even higher as customer interactions have increased by 47% over last year.

Jack Barmby, founder and CEO of Gnatta said: “The way customers communicate with retailers is changing. People expect an instant response on any channel. They want a retailer to know about previous conversations they’ve had, and to be able to connect the dots across channels. A good retailer will be able to deliver that. Great customer experience differentiates a brand. If you’re going to sell more products, you need to be able to handle more customer queries, too.

"Retailers need to be ready to deal with customers seamlessly across multiple channels – phone, social media, messenger, webchat, email, the lot. ”

About Gnatta (www.gnatta.com):
Gnatta enables companies to talk to their customers over any system or channel. It processes more than two million conversations a month across its platform. It was founded by Jack Barmby to pull together all the various systems and channels a company uses to communicate with customers, connecting the data from those systems to provide everything a company needs to have informed and intelligent conversations with them. It enables its clients to use any channel – including email SMS, social media, webchat, telephone, review sites or email – to talk to consumers.

This transforms the way businesses talk to their customers. Because all the data is available in one place from disparate systems, customers have a better experience, resolution times are reduced, and the process of routing conversations is made simple – saving the client money.

It also reduces risk. Because Gnatta is a platform, it can incorporate any way of talking to consumers, so a business can be confident that whatever new technology consumers want to use in the future, Gnatta will have it covered.

To speak to Gnatta contact Kate Hartley, Carrot Communications, on 0771 406 5233 or kate.hartley@carrotcomms.co.uk.