Technology Industry Survey - part 2

As noted in my blog of June 25th that discussed a survey by Accenture regarding customer service and support in high technology industries, one finding was the dramatic difference in perceptions of service and support by executives and their customers. There is more detail provided in the survey report that demonstrates the differences between the executive's and the customer's perspective.

From the survey the executive perspective is:
1. 75% of executives believe their customer's expectations have increased in recent years.
2. 80% of executives describe the customer satisfaction of their overall customer base as moderately or extremely high.
3. 54% rate their service and support an 8 or higher on a scale of 1 to 10 (where 1=very poor and 10=excellent)
4. 75% of executives estimated their customer satisfaction was above average, 57% estimated it was moderately high and 17% said it was extremely high
5. 77% of executives reported having implemented new customer self-service capabilities within the last two years and believe these new capabilities have had a very positive impact on the organization.
6. 93% of executives said they've seen faster resolution of customer problems and 74% said they now have higher customer satisfaction.

From the survey the customer perspective is:
1. 57% of consumers described themselves as somewhat upset, very upset or extremely upset when they accessed their customer service channels
2. 78% of consumers still believe their provider's customer service is at or below the level of service offered by competitors.
3. 46% of consumers said they have to access customer service between 2 and 4 times to resolve their problems and 18% said they have had to do so more than 4 times.
4. 33% of consumers rated their customer service experience about the same as 2 years ago and 22% said it was worse (only 14% rated their experience as "much better")
5. 61% of consumers believe that technology has not improved the service they receive from high-tech companies.

If one can believe the validity of the Accenture survey, and I have little doubt that it is valid and truly representing both sides, then the bottom line is that high technology company exectutives are not getting the real story. It could be that their internal surveys are not measuring customer perceptions correctly, or they may have some filtering going on in their organizations or they just aren't paying attention. No matter what the answer, this should be a wake-up call to these executives.