A surprise last year; a delight this year

“Our focus is on delighting our customers – a delighted customer is a satisfied customer. We believe that everyone deserves dignity and respect and we treat everyone – our people and our customers – that way. We strive to be the friendliest retailer in the country so this survey shows that we must be getting something right. This is really great news and I thank everyone at PEP for making this possible,” says George Steyn, the group's MD.

The group scored 82%, which is 10% higher than the runner-up, Medihelp. The average score of the clothing industry was 65% compared to the company's 82% and the overall average across all sectors was 58%.

The survey, which has been benchmarking service in South Africa since 2001, measures criteria such as staff friendliness and knowledge, responsiveness and empowerment to deal with requests, reliability, empathy and valuing of customers. These criteria are then evaluated across several channels: branch, contact centre (telephone), internet and intermediaries. The study aims to serve as an indicator of South African companies' state of service quality. Computer-aided telephonic interviews were conducted between May and August 2007 with just under 6 000 randomly selected South Africans across 12 industries.

South Africa is increasingly following the worldwide trend to shift its focus to customer-focused and quality service-orientated business practice. In the past, South Africa was often associated with poor service. This led to the establishment of The Orange Index in order to give companies insights into the level of service quality in their company and its impact on customer loyalty.