Customer Satisfaction Trends

Are consumers becoming less satisfield with customer service or are we simply becoming less tolerant and more demanding ? The Institute of Customer Service (yes really!) has recently released its latest update on the levels of customer satisfaction trends in the UK. On the face of it it, it appears to show that overall satisfaction seems to have stabilised following two years of decline. We recommend you take a look at the report yourself, in the meantime here are some of the key points,

• Customer satisfaction appears to have stabilised following 2 years of decline
• Customers who give an organisation a nine or ten (out of ten) rating for customer satisfaction are much more likely to trust, recommend and stay with them, even compared to organisations who receive an eight out of ten
• Customer demographics reveal significant differences in attitudes towards organisations
  • 25 –34 year olds are the least satisfied of any age group – not suprising as this age group is more likely to be heavy users of the web and mobile tech
• In a climate of rising customer expectations, especially around speed and convenience, organisations’ ability to deal efficiently with problems and complaints is a key differentiator between high and low performance
  • There’s a general trend towards less tolerance for poor service and higher levels of expectation around quality and responsiveness.

Consumers face daily decisions and trade-offs regarding the products they want to buy and where they want to buy them. There are many factors that influence the buying decision and your customers (or your competitors customers) will take many things into consideration when deciding what to buy and who to buy from. Propensity to buy is a measure of how likely someone will buy based on a complex mix of emotional and logical analysis involving a range of criteria including price, product range, convenience and product availability (to name a few). Consumer preference is also strongly influenced by how the retailer or brand is perceived in the marketplace, i.e. brands and retailers that provide high levels of customer service are likely to have strong brand perception which in turn has a positive influence on consumer preference. In future blogs we will be examining the importance of driving consumer preference and the important role it plays in helping drive long term sales growth and profitability.

Insitetrack provides price intelligence and competitor price tracking tools to help brands and retailers to more effectively manage prices, manage their channels and optimise prices to maximise margins.