Frost & Sullivan: Malaysia customer experience index sees improvement

KUALA LUMPUR: Customer satisfaction in the banking, telecommunications and insurance sectors in Malaysia has improved based on the results of the 2015 Frost & Sullivan Malaysia Customer Experience survey.

Nitin Bhat, partner and head of Consulting, Asia Pacific at Frost & Sullivan said that the customer experience index (CEI) of the banking sector has increased 0.48 points to 3.69 points in 2015 while CEI in the telecoms sector has increased 0.34 points to 3.61 points in 2015.

The health insurance CEI has added 0.6 points to 3.86 points while life insurance CEI has increased 0.39 points to 3.76 points in 2015.

Bhat said that the choice of product or service offered is the single most important factor in determining the choice of primary bank and telecoms services for Malaysian consumers while rates and fees influence the choice for health and life insurance.

The Frost & Sullivan Customer Experience program focuses on measuring the experiences of consumers across all key touch points, such as in-store/retail, products and services and in the contact centers and across all stages of interaction with the brand.

Consumers will rank their experience across set of pre-defined and well researched quantitative parameters, throughout the three phases of their customer journey - pre-purchase, purchase and postpurchase stage.

The two-month online survey was conducted across more than 1,900 respondents randomly selected from consumer online panels to answer questions on customer experience attributes for specific industries.

Frost & Sullivan decided to focus on the three key sectors - banking, telecoms and insurance due to the high churn rate in these sectors.

“We hope that this research will help companies to fine tune their customer experience strategies and allow them to better retain their customers.

“Companies need to design their customer experience approach by looking at different stages of customers purchase and touch points,” Bhat said.

Bhat also said that based on the Frost & Sullivan Customer Experience survey, Malaysian consumers are the least likely to promote their primary banks and telecoms service providers to others as the average Net Promoter Score (NPS) for banks are at negative eight per cent while telecoms companies are at negative 17 per cent.

Bhat said that banks and telecoms service providers in Malaysia need to continuously improve on their customer experience delivery to move out from the negative territory.

In the health and life insurance sector, Malaysian consumers showed a lower enthusiasm in promoting their service provider to friends and families, with the industry average NPS at negative six per cent.

Bhat said that some categories have observed more than one recipient, while a few have no recipients, which is due to the better or lower than threshold rating by the consumer of different industry players.

Bhat said that branch banking continues to be the most preferred channel for the purchase and post-purchase stages of the customer journey with banks in Malaysia except for the prepurchase stage of which online channel is rated highly for its ability to gather information.

He added that mobile application is under-utilised despite the growth of smartphones or tablets in the Malaysian market.

“In 2015, the banking sector has shifted into an online-driven industry where consumers are more motivated to communicate through their primary bank’s online platform as compared to 2014 where ATM is the most preferred channel among banking consumers.

“This may be due to the improvement made on the online channel, such as the accessibility, user-friendliness and features of the online channel,” Bhat said.

He also said that banking consumers in Malaysia have rated call centers as the least preferred channel to interact through any form of transactions.

“Online, ATM and Branch remain as the most preferred channels for banking transaction in Malaysia. Nevertheless, call centre showed a slight increase in terms of its customer experience as compared to last year,” he said.

Bhat said that choice of products or services is the vital factor in choosing primary telecommunication service provider for Malaysian consumers.

He added that telecoms service providers in Malaysia are struggling to cope with competition, thus, leading them to innovate on a more personalised products or services which can suit each and every market segments accordingly.

“Telecoms providers that cannot cope with the demand of the market will eventually lose their subscribers as competition is stiff,” he said.

Bhat said that online is the highest rated channel for customer experience, due to its high degree of availability that allows customers to perform the required transactions outside of office hours, followed by In-Store and Mobile channel.