Bad service can cost billions
RESEARCH released on Tuesday by global consultant Accenture shows 76% of South African consumers switched one of their service providers in the past year due to poor customer service‚ but 88% said firms could have done something different to prevent them from leaving.
The amount of money being lost to competitors is enormous‚ with the “switching economy”, including about $47-billion (R498-billion) in potential revenue lost when consumers switch to a competitor.
But divergent trends
were spotted between developed markets and the developing world across the 12 867 endconsumers surveyed in 32 different countries in 10 industries.
South African respondents made up 2% of the total. South Africans were most likely to tell their immediate circle of friends‚ family or associates about any negative experiences with a particular company.
Unlike respondents in other emerging markets‚ they were more likely to switch despite being offered preferential treatment or rewards for their business.
The
survey
found
that
respondents in emerging markets were much more likely to use tablets and cellphones to research products and services than those in mature markets – 56% versus 23% in mature markets.
Accenture managing director of information technology (IT) Tammy Whyman said companies needed to improve their understanding of customer habits and preferences through technology in order to beat their competition.
A problem in South Africa was an inability to obtain data and put it into action quickly enough to gain the insight needed to make decisions that benefitted customers.
The survey showed most local companies realised this‚ with 81% dissatisfied in this regard. Whyman said one of the problems was the absence of the IT skills needed to devise the solutions.
She said that while loyalty programmes were all the rage in Africa‚ the time was coming when it would not be necessary to call them loyalty programmes.
“It will be more important to understand customer needs and predict what their needs are going to be (in order to) to provide the right service at the right moment.” — BDLive