Indian Ecommerce Companies listen up – Contrary to popular belief, nearly half of Indian shoppers give more importance to customer service than product price according to latest Verint research.
The report released by Verint based on survey of more than 5,800 consumers across six countries—including India ,China, Hong Kong, Japan, Australia and Indonesia – revealed that only 26 percent of consumers in India believe that price is more important than customer service.
The report also found that most consumers have experienced poor customer service, and surprisingly, have low expectations of receiving great service.
In Asia-Pacific region, consumers were most unhappy with Telecom with nearly 64 percent responding that they were not satisfied followed by retail sector which had 59% unhappy consumers.
However, in India these numbers were even more startling. The percentage of Indian consumers who experienced a service problem within the past six months ranges from 90 percent in the utilities industry to 95% in the financial and telecommunication industries.
Interestingly, 36 percent of Indian consumers use emotions to get what they want while 68 percent get angry when companies make mistake and 58 percent resort to calling customer support helplines for getting better service.
The report also finds that consumers have low expectations of good customer service, with 74 percent of Indians (highest % in Asia-Pac region) are satisfied with what they get. Comparatively, this percentage in Japan is at 30 percent, where service expectations are quite high.
Online Sharing Of Consumer Experience Growing
Consumers are now increasingly sharing their shopping & product experiences online, especially due to surge of smartphones and tablets that enable users to put it online quite easily. More than 53 percent of consumers shared their experiences online via social networking platforms like Facebook and Micro-blogging sites like Twitter.
Surprisingly, more consumers (41%) shared their positive experiences as compares to people who were unhappy (32%).
Consumer’s Needs
The report suggests that vendors and companies who offer products and services, need to concentrate on what matter most to today’s consumers like resolution at first contact and reduction in the average time taken for first response to consumer complaints.
Companies also need to be more responsive and approachable by hiring more friendly and courteous staff. The report also suggests that staff should be trained on regular basis to think out-of-the-box to resolve customer issues.
Details of Survey sample is not provided. India is definitely a price sensitive market. A simple search on Flipkart, Infibeam, Amazon and Myntra will show different prices of the same product. All these are good brands. So as a user it really doesnt bother me from where i buy the product… as long as i am buying at the best price. I personally feel that customer retention in online ecommerce is a farce… its actually google that decides who gets the business.
Ravi, as I have mentioned earlier, always take these surveys and stats with a pinch of salt. These only give rough idea of the situation and they are definitely not exact. Also, many respondents do no offer the exact picture of what they are feeling while participating in the surveys…
I think thats exactly what benefited Flipkart, its great service, when it was running on a Inventory based model. We indians are a bit reluctant but when we are convinced of the service offered and feel secure, we tend to spend more freely.