Our third annual demand report is out. This year we analysed 18.4 million inbound contacts handled by 31 UK organisations in banking, insurance, utilities, travel, education and the public sector, covering every channel from phone and email to webchat and messaging, for the whole of 2025.
Contact is falling, effort is not
Total contact volumes fell by 3% compared with the previous year. Average handling time across all channels rose by 7%. Customers are getting in touch slightly less often, but the contacts that remain are longer and more complicated, often because simple questions have moved online and the difficult ones are left for advisers.
Repeat contact remains stubborn: 19% of customers got in touch again about the same issue within seven days.
Failure demand is still a third of the work
Across the sample, 29% of contacts were failure demand: customers chasing, correcting an error or asking what something meant. The range was wide, from 14% at one water company to 47% at a travel operator during a disruption-heavy summer. The top quartile were not the organisations with the newest technology. They were the ones that reviewed contact reasons every week and gave someone the job of removing the causes.
Digital channels absorb demand rather than remove it
Webchat and messaging now account for 29% of contacts, up from 22%. That shift has not reduced the load on phone teams as much as hoped. One in four chats was followed by a phone call from the same customer within 48 hours.
Chatbots reported an average containment rate of 31%. When we checked which of those customers did not get in touch again within seven days, the figure fell to 12%. Containment is not resolution, and the gap matters when budgets are set on the first number.
What the top quartile did differently
The organisations with the lowest failure demand and repeat contact shared three habits:
- they measured contact reasons, not just volumes
- they gave operations leaders a say in letters, web content and product changes that drive contact
- they judged digital channels on resolution, not on how many contacts they deflected
Get the report
The full report includes benchmarks by sector and channel. Participating organisations receive their own results against the sample. To request a copy, email hello@halveron.junaid.guru.
