Buy Reports
Consumer Sentiments Report - 2009
A National Study of Sentiment, Emotions and Advocacy
This leading edge research represents the first National Consumer driven study for our industry.
The results for the survey covered 52 percent of respondents who had complained in the last three months. The other 48 per cent also provided their opinions on their complaint behaviour and expectations, sentiment, and emotions.
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This study seeks to address deficiencies in current information around consumer emotions. The major benchmarking study for many years has been the American Express study on consumer sentiment and emotions conducted by SOCAP Australia in 1995. This was a study of the proprietary client list of several cooperative organisations, and well before the internet and mobile phones began to play such an enormous role.
Today’s customers are time-poor and expect very different levels of interaction than they did some three to five years ago. They do not respond to policy and processes dictated by
practitioners. The recent financial crisis in global markets have proved to be a major accelerant of this consumer responsiveness, the demand for service, the demand for recognition, and increased consumer advocacy. The findings have delivered a strong message for the industry. Respondents
rated the industry and the consultants poorly for:
• An inability to listen
• A lack of understanding of the issues presented by consumers
• Not understanding the value of a complaint (as a reflection of customer value)
• Not communicating in acceptable timeframes to the customer (overall responsiveness)
• Not empowering staff with authority and decision-making through training
• Misreading the value of gifts, apologies, reward and resolution, and
• Not identifying with the consumer’s satisfaction requirements (‘in their shoes’ behaviour).
The study also investigated consumer sentiment around method of complaint. These findings yielded a wealth of information on how to improve customer service, response, complaint
handling techniques and overall efficiency and cost restraint.
This extensive study provides a rich source of information to benchmark against and move forward with confidence about our contribution to customer service and loyalty.
