Internet Use Leads Clients to the Enemy
December 22nd, 2005 by Adam Cuothe
In the article titled Accenture Survey Finds That Customer Loyalty Can Be Lost In a ‘Click’, Accenture learns how to pronounce “duh” one mouthful at a time.
“The Internet is making it easier than ever for consumers to research companies’ products and services and take their business to different companies when their expectations are not met, according to a recent study released today by Accenture.”
Accenture says that after surveying over 1,000 US consumers regarding customer loyalty. It turns out that 61 percent are disloyal because, with the Internet giving them access to information about competition, it’s easier to change service providers, another 50 percent are disloyal because the Internet lets them purchase on-line. So I may be stretching the “disloyal” factor a bit, but Accenture’s news is rather confusing–it refers, seemingly interchangeably, to both “service providers” and “companies” but Accenture doesn’t say what constitutes a service provider. While it might (with some qualifications) be possible to say every service provider is a company, not every company is a service provider. In what sense is this customer loyalty? Are they talking about Internet service providers? Or do they mean some more general sense of the word?
Nevertheless, it doesn’t stop their Woody fellow from generalizing on how “it’s more important than ever that companies get their customer relationships right…” He continues to mention a ripple effect from customers sharing their experiences with others and then, voila, the supporting stats
“…63 percent of respondents said they would complain directly to a company about a service or product problem, an even greater number (68 percent) said they would tell family and friends about their negative experiences with those companies…”
How does the Internet play into this? Accenture doesn’t tell us. The news release simply offers a few correlating points, and none stand up to a clear causal relationship. In the end Accenture talks about service providers again, even though the subtitle for the release is “Internet Challenges Companies to Re-think Customer Relationships,”
Shall we see how easy it is for Accenture to lose clients, err I mean service obtainers (I guess they’re who get services from providers) to a competitor? Here they are.
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