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A new survey by the Accenture Global Consumer Company decided to look into the present state of customer service. There has been a lot of talk about customer service in the press lately, with many stating that it is central to business survival and, perhaps more importantly, business success.

The survey asked ten thousand consumers who came from 27 different countries to evaluate 10 industries. They had to rate the industries in terms of service expectations and loyalty. They also had to evaluate their customer satisfaction and whether they would be likely to switch provider in the future.

Robert Wollan, global managing director of Accenture Customer Relationship Management commented on the findings of the valuable survey, “While high-quality sales and service in areas such as product knowledge and efficient issue resolution remain a basic requirement, in order to achieve sustainable, profitable growth…companies must better understand what really keeps their customers engaged by examining a number of overlooked, but critical points of interaction in the customer relationship.”

The results of the survey were very interesting to say the least. The survey showed that the proportion of consumers who switched between companies rose in the case of eight out of ten industries. This was taken between the years of 2010 and 2011.

The top industries for switching customers were in the cases of the mobile phone providers, as well as gas and electric utilities providers. In fact, this was the area in which consumers switched the most (five per cent of the survey said they have switched utility providers.)

The survey also highlighted findings on about consumer trend. One of the main trends is for consumers to continue being a customer with one company, while also adding services from another provider. For example, the consumer may continue having gas supplied from one utility provider but then go and have electric with another utility provider – displaying no loyalty to one particular utility company.

The study showed something about consumer loyalty, too, which is something every business would like to know more about. The study showed 23% of consumers don’t feel ‘very loyal’ to their providers. Also, the research showed that 24% of consumers don’t feel any loyalty at all. In terms of loyalty programmes, around 49% said they would be influenced by a loyalty programme.

In terms of customer satisfaction, 33% of the consumers that were surveyed said they were satisfied with wait time that some companies had, a slight improvement compared to just 27% of people in 2010.

The findings from this survey really highlight the importance of good customer service in building customer loyalty and consequently, retaining your customers – with perhaps the most shocking statistic being that two out of three consumers switched companies because of a poor customer service experience. While it can be difficult to build customer loyalty, excellent customer service helps to make customers feel more loyal to your brand and increase the likeliness of customers sticking with your company.