4 in 10 People Will Look for Alternative Supplier if They Experience an Unavailable Service or Product
London, UK: 22nd January 2009: UK consumers are demanding greater levels of customer service and availability as a result of the credit crunch and are increasingly prepared to turn their back on businesses which cannot provide it.
According to research from SunGard Availability Services, the pioneer and leading provider of Information Availability and business continuity services, more than one in three UK adults (37%) expects organisations to improve their levels of service and availability in light of the economic downturn. Worryingly for businesses, UK adults are becoming increasingly unwilling to put up with poor service and availability. Faced with a service being unavailable for 24 hours (such as a website, call centre, mobile phone or email system), almost 4 in 10 (39%) respondents would look to leave that supplier – this compares to only 24% that said they would switch provider in a similar survey in 2006[1]. A further one third of people (33%) would complain to the provider and tell family and friends about the problems they have encountered.
According to the research, one in five UK adults (21%) feel less loyalty to their favourite brands in light of the credit crunch, against only 4% that feel more loyal to brands.Keith Tilley, managing director UK and executive vice president Europe, SunGard Availability Services, said: “Challenging economic conditions are clearly going to mean that consumers demand ever greater levels of service and availability from the businesses they deal with. And with Woolworths and Zavvi providing an object lesson in how supply-chain risks can rapidly undermine ability to keep customer happy, businesses need to recognise the risk of downtime or non-availability of services and products, not just in terms of lost revenue in the short term, but also in loss of longer-term brand loyalty and survival.”
When faced with an unavailable service, older consumers (over 34 years old) do not consider the reasons for the problem; the majority (51%) simply put it down to the supplier having a poor level of customer service. Younger adults, however, are quick to recognise when a company is experiencing technology problems (50%); only one in three (37%) associates non-availability with poor customer service. Despite this, if faced with an unavailable service for 24 hours, 4% of total respondents would actually assume that the provider had gone bankrupt.
Older consumers would find it most difficult to go without internet access for 24 hours, whilst younger consumers most fear being unable to use their mobile phone (42% of 18-24 years old cited this as the service that they would find most difficult to go without for a day).
When it comes to non-availability of services, UK consumers find call centres that take too long to respond to or handle an enquiry to be the most annoying (62%). Other sources of annoyance include websites being down (16%) and lack of availability of a particular product in a shop or online (10%).
Consumers cited supermarkets as offering the best and most available services (58%); whereas only one in five (20%) of people cited mobile phone providers as offering high availability services.
*About the Research
Research was conducted by YouGov Plc. Total sample size was 2,589 UK adults. Fieldwork was undertaken between 25th - 27th November 2008. The survey was carried out online. The figures have been weighted and are representative of all UK adults (aged 18+).
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[1] IA in Action