• by Aaron Baar , January 31, 2012

People are growing more satisfied with customer service, although they continue to switch companies (including wireless phone, cable and utility providers) at high rates.

According to Accenture’s Global Consumer Survey (which polled 10,000 consumers in 27 countries), two- thirds (66%) of consumers said they switched companies based on what they considered to be poor customer service. That’s up about 8% over the previous year. Wireless phone, cable and utilities had the highest year-to-year increase of switching (up 5% year-to-year), including consumers who either switched entirely to another provider or added services from a different provider.

“Companies tend to be measuring switching at an end-game level,” says Robert Wollan, global managing director of Accenture’s customer relationship management division. “Now companies need to be on guard for managing not only the total churn metric, but also the partial switching -- perhaps as an indicator of a customer on the way out.

Ultimately, only about a quarter of consumers (23%) feel “very loyal” to their service providers, about the same amount (24%) who indicated they had no loyalty at all to providers. Fewer than half (49%) said they were influenced by loyalty programs offered by their service providers.

Meanwhile, the 10 attributes the survey uses to track customer satisfaction all increased in 2011. For instance, 33% of consumers were satisfied with the wait time for service (compared with 27% in 2010) and 38% said they were satisfied with the ability to resolve issues without speaking to an agent (compared with 33% in 2010).

Ultimately, the survey uncovered “blind spots” that were important to customers, but were not being met by companies. Among them:

• An inability to offer various opportunities for engagement, including digital (57% of consumers were frustrated with an inability to engage through the channel of their choice).
• Overlooking signs that consumers are looking to switch. (The rate of partial switching, or adding another provider in a similar industry, is up in all 10 sectors covered by the survey. Among wireless service providers, for instance, complete switching was up only 2%, but an additional 3% were willing to add a different provider, leading to a 5% total switching increase.
• Failing to follow through on a customer service promise. The number one complaint among consumers was having a company make a promise for something and deliver something different, Wollan says.

“It’s almost counterintuitive to think of what we’re seeing this year,” Wollan says. “We’re fixing the things that were historically detractors, such as talking to people who aren’t familiar with products and services. But [those fixes are] such basic requirements -- they’re not stemming the tide.”