Roy Morgan may have shut the doors of its New Zealand office, but it’s still checking up on Kiwi brands for its New Zealand Customer Satisfaction awards. And New World, Care Chemist, Max, Robert Harris Café, Noel Leeming, Kathmandu and Powershop have all celebrated their first wins.
Time has been a fairly popular theme for Kiwi brands in recent months, with Hyundai running its Family Time Project and ANZ just releasing a couple of ads detailing how time really is money. TSB has also joined that club, with a new campaign via Special Group that aims to turn potential customers on to its business by promoting its ‘putting customers first’ philosophy.
In an age where social media offers a platform where consumers can talk about anything they want, to virtually whoever they want, listening to (and acting on) the responses—the good, the bad and the ugly—is key to upping your customer retention rates, reducing churn and getting better bang for your marketing buck, says Mat Wylie.
The ‘new Telecom’ carries with it a fair bit of baggage, some of it well-deserved and based on its legacy, some of it based on misperceptions and a general lack of understanding about the oft-confusing telco realm. And in an effort to address some of those issues, Telecom has taken the fairly brave step of opening itself up to the masses and launching a new website called www.whytelecom.co.co.nz that’s part PR campaign, part customer service innovation and part public service announcement. And, in quintessential Telecom fashion, it’s gone heavy on the animals.
Swipe HQ, a Kiwi offering with echoes of US payment technology Square, is on track to hit the market in August. But founder Manas Kumar, chief executive of local tech company Optimizer HQ, which listed on the German stock exchange this year, says it’s more than just a transactional technology. It’s an “end to end” business solution.
We’ve got a long way to go in New Zealand when it comes to managing B2B customer relationships. Overseas, particularly in the UK, Joe Public won’t settle for substandard service and is typically very vocal when it comes to dishing out feedback. Whilst being on the receiving end of this is never a pleasant experience, it comes with two extra lifelines. First, a second chance to do right by that one customer and, secondly, the opportunity to spare future customers from a similar experience.
First Orcon and DraftFCB got a serve from HeyDay for getting the date the internet was born in New Zealand wrong in its recent TVC. And now it’s in the eye of a social media storm after its new Genius all-in-one broadband/home phone product proved too popular for its own good, leading to a host of jilted customers venting their displeasure with the telco.
In slightly surprising news, New Zealand’s banks are leading the way when it comes to customer service, with one-third of respondents to the Colmar Brunton Distinctive Customer Experiences Survey of 1020 New Zealanders saying they had a particularly good experience when dealing with their bank in the past 12 months. And, in slightly less surprising news, telecommunications companies still have plenty of improving to do, with one in five Kiwi consumers claiming to have had a negative experience when dealing with their telco provider in the same period.
Despite the ‘uncooperative’ economic conditions, entries for the Auckland round of the New Zealand Retailer’s Association Top Shop Awards were up 34 percent on the 2008 edition. And 123 of those entries have been chosen as finalists across eight different categories.
Earlier this week, a customer service survey showed Kiwi consumers are voting with their feet when businesses don’t meet their expectations. And another customer service survey, the KiwiHost/JRA Customer Service Pulse, shows those expectations now involve organisations responding to their concerns much faster than they have in the past.
Despite our apathetic streak (or, perhaps more accurately, a national belief that if you just keep moseying on things will probably come right eventually), new research has showed that New Zealand consumers are actually fighting back against poor customer experiences and voting with their feet when businesses don’t meet their expectations.