The UK is a nation of experience sharers and email is its predominant channel of choice, both for routine customer contact and for proactively telling organisations what they think.
These are just some of the key findings from new research published by the CCMA (Contact Centre Management Association), supported by the customer engagement solution provider, Route 101, based on a nationally representative survey of 2,000 UK adults conducted in Spring 2026.
The research reveals that UK consumers are now more likely to post publicly about positive customer service experiences than negative ones, with review sites being the most popular platform for doing so.
And when consumers want to share unsolicited feedback directly with an organisation, email is the channel they reach for most. The same instinct extends to routine contact, with email now the most preferred channel for simple customer queries, chosen by 48% of adults compared with 41% who prefer phone. For complex queries, phone still leads the way at 55%, and for urgent queries it becomes the dominant choice by a wide margin, selected by 68% of respondents.
We Are Not All The Same
The UK consumers’ experience-sharing behaviour shows that beneath overall averages, consumers differ profoundly in terms of both how they contact organisations, what they expect from their interactions with organisations and how they respond to the experience afterwards.
These insights led to the CCMA developing five Customer Contact Personas, each representing a distinct type of UK consumer with their own preferences, behaviours and attitudes.
The five personas – Efficiency Optimisers, Knowledge Gatherers, Experience Enthusiasts, Simplicity Seekers and Tradition Maintainers – were developed using a cluster analysis of 56 variables, revealing meaningful differences in how each group approaches every aspect of customer contact.
Efficiency Optimisers are goal-focused consumers who view customer contact as a task to be completed as quickly and easily as possible. They favour email for routine queries but will go straight to the telephone when it’s complex or urgent.
Simplicity Seekers take a highly transactional approach to customer contact and are the least engaged of all the personas. They tend to express few strong opinions about how they want to be served, with 44% having no preference on advisor communication style.
Knowledge Gatherers are the most prolific contact-makers of all five personas and are the most open to using digital channels even in complex situations. For example, 49% having contacted a bank for customer service in the past six months, compared with just 28% of Simplicity Seekers.
Experience Enthusiasts are the persona most closely aligned with the experience-sharing behaviour identified in the research, and are always seeking connection and meaningful interactions, holding organisations to exceptionally high standards. 74% have posted publicly about a positive customer service experience, and 76% have proactively contacted a provider to offer praise. The flipside of their high expectations is a low tolerance for disappointment, with 66% having stopped doing business with a provider following a poor experience.
Tradition Maintainers are the strongest advocates for phone and, where available, face-to-face contact. They are sceptical of AI, with 49% actively rejecting all six suggested AI benefits put to them in the survey, and are the most likely to want reassurance that a self-serve transaction has been completed successfully.
While the research finds that 68% of UK adults say technology is making their lives easier, attitudes to AI in customer service across all five personas remain divided. 33% say it is a net positive while 34% say it is a net negative.
On the findings and how they impact organisational thinking around customer contact, Leigh Hopwood, CEO of the CCMA, said: “We are not all the same and the most sophisticated organisations have long understood this when it comes to product development and marketing.
“There is an ever-increasing awareness of this in customer contact too, with people’s behaviours, preferences and willingness to share feedback varying enormously. As technology makes personalisation increasingly achievable, it becomes incumbent on organisations to understand who their customers are and start designing meaningfully different contact experiences for them. These personas give providers a practical foundation for doing exactly that.”
The full research Beyond Demographics: Customer Contact Personas Shaping UK Service Expectations is available now from the CCMA at: www.ccma.org.uk/customer-contact-personas-shaping-uk-service-expectations.
Readers can also discover their own persona(s) by taking the free quiz at: www.ccma.org.uk/personas.
