The New Zealand edition of SAP’s 2017 Digital Experience Report has shown little movement since last year’s survey, with consumers only marginally less disappointed with their digital experiences.
The proportion of consumers unsatisfied with digital experiences was 36 per cent in 2017, compared with 37 per cent in 2016, and the percentage of those delighted remained consistent at 31 per cent.
Despite this lack of progress, three industries posted positive results overall, with the banking industry topping the list, followed by insurance and air travel. The consumer retail sector had an even split of delighted and unsatisfied customers, while retail groceries, telecommunications and utilities all had more unsatisfied customers when it came to digital experience, and media and entertainment was the worst-performing industry overall.
Online retailer Mighty Ape was nominated by New Zealanders as having the best digital experience among all brands, while other leaders included ANZ Bank New Zealand, AA Insurance and Netflix.
“The findings show that NZ brands have not improved the digital experiences they provide and risk falling behind global competitors and digital native brands entering the market,” said Graeme Riley, managing director, SAP New Zealand.
“We’ve seen the importance of digital experiences for brands in Australia and New Zealand and the results show that the business benefits of having a positive digital experience cannot be ignored. Similarly, having a negative digital experience can significantly impact customer advocacy and loyalty and with businesses in New Zealand at a standstill, there should be a concerted focus to delight their customers in the year ahead.”
This year, the survey also looked at omni-channel expectations of consumers. Eighty-nine per cent of respondents are using two or more channels to interact with brands, with 40 per cent using at least five channels. Amongst digital channels, websites scored the highest satisfaction rating (39 per cent), followed by email (31 per cent) and mobile apps (24 per cent).
These provided a better customer experience than shopfront/in-store/branch (21 per cent), telephone/contact centres (20 per cent) or mail (17 per cent). Newer technologies such as social media (7 per cent) and live chat (-8 per cent) offered the lowest levels of satisfaction for digital channels, with more unsatisfied customers than happy ones for live chat in particular.
