A new international survey has counted up the cost of poor customer service across 16 major industrialised economies – and found that businesses lose a total of US$338.5 billion per year when customers defect and abandon their purchases as a result of a bad experience.

The hardest hit industries across all countries surveyed are financial services, cable and satellite TV providers, and a variety of telecommunications companies.

The average value of each lost relationship across all countries surveyed is $243 per year. Losses were defined as transaction taken to a competitor (63 per cent of the total) and transactions abandoned entirely (37 per cent of the total).

The survey – conducted by Greenfield Online and sponsored by Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories in collaboration with industry analysts at Datamonitor/Ovum – asked consumers in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Czech Republic, France, Germany, India, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Russia, the UK and the US, about their priorities and the changes most needed to improve the quality of their customer service experiences.

While many larger economies saw greater impact, the losses were not always proportionate to the size of the economy. For example, Brazil and Mexico represented two of the top four countries impacted.

In the past year, financial services firms saw more than $44 billion in lost revenue. And cable and satellite TV providers alone suffered more than $37 billion of losses. Wireless network providers and Internet service providers each had $36 billion in lost revenue. Landline service providers also lost $33 billion.

Best and Worst Rated Industries

Some industries that were hard hit, like financial services, also had some good news. Financial services companies were viewed more positively than negatively, while other industries, such as telecommunications, were not as fortunate: negative sentiment outweighed positive sentiment by a two-to-one ratio. Consumers were asked to select the industries that did the best and worst job of customer service. The consumer’s choice for best customer satisfaction with industry is shown in blue, and worst industry is shown in red. The most positive ratings are for consumer products, travel/hospitality, and financial services. The most heavily negative ratings are for telecommunications and government.
 
Survey Sample

A total of 8,880 consumers, at least 500 from each country, were selected from all age and income groups and surveyed for the report titled, ‘The Cost of Poor Customer Service: The Economic Impact of the Customer Experience and Engagement’. Consumers were asked about the frequency of their interactions with businesses via the web, through contact centres and with their mobile devices. They were also asked to identify the impact of those interactions on their purchasing decisions.

Reasons Consumers Leave

Consumers across all countries cited key reasons that they leave. Assisted service is well developed, with the overwhelming majority of consumers saying their most satisfying experience occurred because of a capable and competent customer service representative. But self-service that is not intelligently integrated with assisted service is a key area of concern. Consumers feel the most significant root causes of poor service are:

• Being trapped in automated self-service
• Being forced to wait too long for service
• Repeating themselves
• Representatives that lack the skills to answer their enquiry

 Some interesting differences occur regionally. For example, in many European countries, including Germany, the Netherlands, France, the UK and the Czech Republic, a significant portion of consumers said one of their greatest sources of frustration was being unable to reach customer service without paying a charge for the call: 29 per cent of consumers in Germany said so; in the Netherlands 25 per cent mentioned this; nearly ten per cent of Chinese consumers also cited this as a source of frustration.

Daniel Hong, lead analyst of customer interaction at Ovum, said: “With the rise of social media and increased consumer awareness, the cost of customer frustration continues to grow. We’re advising enterprise businesses to develop cohesive strategies that straddle all channels of customer communication. The difference between delivering exceptional customer service and merely providing acceptable service is pronounced. Differentiating on service, especially in service-centric industries such as finance and telecommunications, is how enterprises can retain customers in today’s challenging business climate.”

Common Wish Lists

There were some broad areas of agreement among consumers from many regions. Three common threads emerged among all countries. First, consumers are demanding better integration between self-service and assisted service, including voice self-service and eServices. The most requested improvements in all countries were to be able to start in voice self-service or the Web and get live assistance from an agent, and to start in email and have better integration with agent-assisted service. In other words: “Don’t ask me twice.”

Most Requested improvements

When asked what they would most like to see companies deploy to improve service, 40 per cent chose human service, but more than half of consumers chose at least one new communication channel among their top choices. In other words: “Treat my interactions as a conversation.” More than 18 per cent selected better integration of communication channels as their first choice, 16 per cent chose enriched content such as video and 16 per cent chose web assistants or avatars.

Greatest Sources of Customer Satisfaction

Consumers were also asked to identify the factors that make the biggest difference in improving satisfaction levels. According to the data, consumer satisfaction increases when companies meet four key needs:

• Competency
• Convenience
• Proactive engagement
• Personalisation

Proactive outreach emerged as an area in which consumers want greater engagement. More than 86 per cent of consumers defined proactive engagement as a ‘strong benefit’ or would ‘welcome proactive assistance’ when stuck on the Web or in some form of self-service.