BDO Dunwoody Weekly CEO/Business Leader Poll By COMPAS in Canadian Business For Publication August 14, 2008

Transcription

1 C E O s Consumer Experience: Big Corporations Service Quality Declining Partly Because Customer Service Quality Does Not Affect Success; Insurance Companies OK; Airlines Earn Failing Grades BDO Dunwoody Weekly CEO/Business Leader Poll By COMPAS in Canadian Business For Publication August 14, 2008 COMPAS Inc. Public Opinion and Customer Research August 14, 2008

2 1.0. Introduction A more than two-thirds majority of the CEO/business leader panel perceives the service quality of large companies as in decline. Very large majorities of panelists attribute declining service to the lack of impact of service quality on corporate success, the use of overseas call centres, and the unavailability of phone numbers or addresses for senior executives. Insurance companies earn a reasonably good grade for service, followed by banks. Both are seen as somewhat stable in the quality of the service that they provide. Airlines and telephone and cable companies earn poor grades. Overwhelming majorities of CEOs and business leaders on the panel perceive their service as declining. These are the key findings from this past week s Internet survey of CEOs and business leaders on the COMPAS panel. The weekly business survey is undertaken for Canadian Business magazine under sponsorship of BDO Dunwoody LLP Declining Customer Service Key findings: A strong majority sees the customer service provided by large companies as declining, as shown in table 2A; An apparent lack of impact of service quality on corporate success, the use of overseas call centres, and the inaccessibility of senior executives, whose coordinates are unavailable, are factors contributing to poor service quality, as shown in table 2B; Insurance companies earn a reasonably good grade for service, followed by banks, as shown in table 2C. Both 2

3 are seen as somewhat stable in the quality of the service that they provide, as shown in table 2D. Airlines and telephone and cable companies earn poor grades. Overwhelming majorities of CEOs and business leaders on the panel perceive their service as declining. Table 2A: The experience of business leaders as both suppliers and consumers makes them outstanding judges of the quality of customer service provided by large companies. (Q1) Over the last 5 years, do you perceive the quality of customer service by large corporations (e.g. banks, telcos/cablecos, insurance companies, airlines) as generally a burden? ROTATE POLES % Declining a lot 28 Declining somewhat 42 Remaining the same 15 Improving somewhat 16 Improving a lot 0 Don t know or no opinion 0. Table 2B: (Q2) On a 7 point scale where 7 means a significant problem for good customer service by large companies and 1, the opposite, how much of an problem is each of the following when you encounter it? RANDOMIZE The seeming lack of impact of poor customer service on the success of large firms Call centres located overseas Mean DNK

4 The unavailability of phone numbers or addresses for senior executives of a firm providing poor service Mean DNK Table 2C: (Q3, Q5, Q7, Q9) On a 100 point, school report card scale, how would you rate the customer service of today? Mean DNK Insurance companies 63 5 Banks 59 4 Telephone and cable companies 50 3 Airlines 48 6 Table 2D: (Q4, Q6, Q8, Q10) Compared to 5 years ago, is customer service by Improving Declining DNK Banks Insurance companies Telephone and cable companies Airlines Reflecting widespread panel opinion, a nationally known business leader had this to say: It is a race to the bottom and the customer has no option. The following are a range of verbatims on the subject: 4

5 High-tech industry is deteriorating. Medical industry is deteriorating. Government services are deteriorating. Hospitality industry is slightly improving. Most airlines have gone to the dogs - with the exception of [NAME OF COMPANY], who still seem to care about their passengers. Whatever happened to the concepts of "the customer is always right" and "without customers, we don't have jobs - they pay our salaries." Customer service in public sectors as a whole is declining as well! Transportation service is declining. Services from municipality [are declining}. I would like to comment on the increase in telephone systems that do not recognize "O" and simply disconnect, and the increased number of times I cannot even find a phone number or an in order to respond to poor service or request a solution. These firms simply want your monthly cash flow. Since their competitors are offering comparable lousy service, it is a race to the bottom and the customer has no option. Customer service always seems to be the first place to be hit when making cuts. Customer retention isn t as important as new customer growth. Telco/TV service [NAME OF COMPANY] is the most frustrating and annoying of all. And it keeps getting worse. Banks, notably [NAME OF COMPANY], seem to have adopted a culture of caring and acting to serve and benefit clients. In general, companies in all sectors GENERALLY have declining customer service. Customer service has moved from personal care and attention to a 'rule book' mentality and/or self service options. 5

6 Revenue Canada is improving. Probably because they are hiring literate people in rural areas and empowering them to make decisions and not read from a "one size fits none" script. There is nothing worse than calling your cable provider for assistance and having the so called technician belligerently refuse to assist you until you follow their script, knowing full well that your computer is plugged in and was functioning right up until it stopped. In my honest opinion any service provider whose staff do not recognize the clients capability [is incompetent]. Sadly, the final outcome of all this scripted service is what the banks are doing now. The staff are scored based on the profiles of their clients, if you are any shade different than plain vanilla the customer service agent will look to dump your account or transfer ownership to avoid a decline in their points total. The ultimate outcome from people optimizing their "PAY" reward by having an ideal score is poor business relations. Oil patch service companies maintain a high level of customer service. Generally speaking, my experience has been that the customer service in any aspect of retail sales has slid down hill. The attitude I seem to get is, "I don't know, I don't care, I'm not about to go find out." and "It's time for my break so don't bother asking me a question." Banks seem to be aware of their vulnerability to poor customer service, and are giving it attention. The airlines are racing each other to the bottom in the name of cost cutting. One national airline in particular simply doesn't care because of their market dominance. North American auto manufacturers are continuing to provide less and less service/support. 6

7 Oddly enough, the quality of services provided by the Federal Government seems to have improved. The hotel business has improved over the last several years, where most large companies seem to go out of their way to offer the worst possible service to their clients. It is as if they believe there are no options for the consumer of their services. If large business would look at the service model of small, struggling companies and pattern themselves on that, they would have much happier customers. Hospitals and health care services due to centralization and cost pressures (deterioration). Canada Post corporation and other major transportation and distribution companies due to improvements in tracing technologies (improvement). Restaurant and retail service has declined significantly due mostly to shortages of staff and the inability to train staff due to significant turnover and shortages. The baby boomer birth rate was selfishly too low to provide for this present day workforce. You have identified the most ubiquitous that businesses deal with. Some have improved in some aspects of their customer service and deteriorated in other aspects. But on balance, it is a net deterioration, particularly with banks, airlines and insurance companies. Phone companies are awful and cable companies have picked up the slack. Especially [NAME OF COMPANY] their customer service is excellent. Banks could care less about the customer and insurance companies. Service in credit unions, as opposed to banks, is improving, head and shoulders above banks; environmental consulting engineering is getting worse month over month Most large companies like to project a market image that they are service orientated, but in fact realize that servicing a customer is always a short term expense line that is hard to 7

8 link to a revenue line. As a result, their actual quality of service is declining Travel [industry is] declining. Being in Alberta and experiencing a shortage of employees we have seen a dramatic decline in most service sectors especially food, fuel, or hospitality. Many staff have an "I could care less" attitude as they can leave their job today and find another one by the morning. Hospitality/food service. I notice a definite decline in government services and an unwillingness to be helpful. Service provided by mobile telephone companies and Internet connection firms is deteriorating. Significant deterioration in cable/internet and telephone customer service. The web has made a huge difference, as there is often a lot of self help stuff. The customer service reps are there to handle real issues not trivial matters. The trend is to replace people with automated systems. This causes major service deterioration until software is up to scratch - and this can take a decade or more to refine. Even then there must be final absence of personal firewall to work in all circumstances. This can eventually bring down corporations as they remain unaware of increasing product resentment. GM lost markets [for] 19 years and still they failed to plug holes which are still sinking them. The most successful growth of a corporation was one where the CEO put on overalls and visited customers and walked round his shops one day a week. The voice mail work and number of times you have to punch numbers to get to talk to someone is a huge irritant, some organizations don t even have phone numbers listed you have to get through on Internet. 8

9 Governmental customer service has dramatically gone downhill over the past 5 years i.e. passport renewals, tax queries. 3.0 Methodology The COMPAS web-survey of CEOs and leaders of small, medium, and large corporations was conducted August 7 8, Respondents constitute an essentially hand-picked panel with a higher numerical representation of small and medium-sized firms. Because of the small population of CEOs and business leaders from which the sample was drawn, the study can be considered more accurate than comparably sized general public studies. In studies of the general public, surveys of 110 are deemed accurate to within approximate 9.4 percentage points 19 times out of 20. The principal and co-investigator on this study are Conrad Winn, Ph.D. and Tamara Gottlieb. 9