Customer Perspective from the Brits

A DHL Express survey of 1200 British adults give some interesting insights into the value of customer service and some of the dissatisfiers. Some of the results of the survey include:
1. 35% of the Brits think that products and services have the most impact on their purchasing decisions. However, 27% think that customer service has the most impact.
2. Women are more concerned than men about customer service 29% for women and 24% for men.
3. The top dissatisfier for customer service among the Brits is waiting times (83%). The second was language barriers (80%). The third was lack of knowledge (74%).
4. The average Brit prefers face-to-face communication (39%). A close second is computer-based communication (35%). Face-to-face communication is more popular with men than women (43% for men versus 36% for women).
5. Age makes a difference. Consumers between the ages of 16 and 24 were more tolerant of poor customer service. Only 44% would seek an alternative provider. Consumers over the age of 55 would seek an alternative provider 64% of the time after receiving poor customer service.
6. 86% of the Brits say that poor customer service affects their decision to make future purchases from a company and 95% say that poor customer service affects their perception of the business as a whole. These percentages are dramatically different that the statistic in item #1 above and appear to be in congruent with the previous statistic. Since respondents are often not congruent in their thinking, this may not be a survey problem.

Since I would expect DHL Express to perform a valid survey, I am concluding that the results are truly indicative of the Brits perspective of customer service. The bottom line is that these findings give another perspective of the impact of customer service on loyalty to a business. Having spoken to several Brits at a conference in London in October, these results track their anecdotal remarks.

Impact of Dissatisfiers

I have written extensively about the very significant difference between satisfiers and dissatisfiers. I have made the point that customers will tolerate a temporary decline in performance of a company process or product that is a satisfier (such as the temperature of a hamburger at McDonalds that is not really warm), and continue to do business with the company. However, when a customer experiences a decline in a dissatisfier, the impact can be immediate loss of that customer (such as a finding a dirty restroom at the McDonalds).

This difference has been validated by a survey of 500 Australian adults by StollzNow Research. On the positive side they found that 28 percent of consumers will remain loyal to companies that provide them with the best service. But consider the impact of the dissatisfiers.
1. 79 percent of consumers have stopped doing business with an organization because of a bad experience (you can bet it had to do with a dissatisfier).
2. 71 percent of consumers tell others about their negative experience with the aim of preventing other consumers from doing business with the company at fault.

The primary reason I am using this wonderful example of the impact of dissatisfiers is to point out that most surveys do not have the ability to sort out the satisfiers from the dissatisfiers. Companies can recover from a decline in performance of a product or service which is known to be a satisfier but will begin to lose customers immediately when a product or service that is a dissatisfier declines.

The bottom line is that companies must be aware of what the dissatisfiers are. They must be ever vigilant to manage the dissatisfiers because of the immediacy of the impact on their business.