The 2022 edition of the Symmetry of Attitudes Barometer reveals a large perception gap between customers and employees in all retail sectors (mass retail, specialized retail and e-commerce).
Retail among the champions of customer relations
Up 9 points to 57%, mass retail is just behind the restaurant industry (62%) and insurance (59%) on the 2022 podium for overall customer satisfaction. It is just ahead of the e-commerce sector, which obtains 56% overall customer satisfaction, up 5 points, while specialized distribution stagnates at 49%.
However, the barometer reveals that customer satisfaction is greatly overestimated by retail employees compared to customers, since 76% of retail employees have a positive assessment of customer relations in their company, but only 57% of the latter, a gap of 19 points. The gap between employees (75%) and customers (49%) is even more spectacular in specialized distribution, with a 26-point difference.
In the retail sector, 63% of employees but only 40% of customers - a 23-point gap in perception - consider that facilitation and adaptability are key to solving customer problems. This gap is even 33 points, which is considerable (69% of employees vs. 36% of customers) for specialized retail.
3 out of 4 employees do not recommend their company in e-commerce
The comparative recommendation scores reveal a significant social malaise in the e-commerce sector, which is systematically at the bottom of the 11 economic sectors studied by the Service Academy: only 25% of employees say they are ready to recommend their company's products and services to their friends and family, and only 27% would recommend working there to someone close to them.
Overall, the recommendation scores reveal very large discrepancies between the perception of customers and employees in two of the three retail sectors: only 39% of customers versus 65% of employees in specialized retail would recommend the company to work for and, on the other hand, 40% of e-commerce customers versus only 27% of employees. On the other hand, the recommendation of work is more harmonious for mass retail, with 44% of customers and 41% of employees.
Human-digital harmony not yet achieved
While mass retail and specialized retail have developed their omnichannel capabilities to meet their customers' expectations, there is still a lot of room for improvement in terms of human-digital harmony. Only 45% of mass retail customers, 37% of specialized retail customers and 38% of e-commerce customers have a positive assessment. Human-digital harmony is also assessed by a minority of retail (44%), e-commerce (41%) and specialized retail (49%) employees. It is even the dimension with the most negative opinions in the Symmetry of Attitudes barometer for employees in retail and specialized distribution, which is an even more important issue as these two economic sectors have deployed their omnichannel strategy to meet their customers' requirements.
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