The Ask Afrika Orange Index 2021 Ranking released - Customer experience levels decline during Covid and go digital

The Ask Afrika Orange Index® has been at the forefront of service benchmarking since 2001 and is the broadest, independent, and most widely referenced service excellence benchmark in South Africa. The benchmark has been tracking customer experience, and the changing trends and expectations since 2001. The 2021 Ask Afrika Orange Index® not only celebrates a long history of tracking data but also provides customer experience and service scores across 31 industries and 200 individual brands. A total of 19,986 South Africans were interviewed during May to July 2021 to establish which companies provide the best customer experience in South Africa.

South Africans have shifted on their views of customer experience:

In the past five years customer experience service levels continue to decline, as do customer loyalty towards brands. The decline in customer experience is on both the emotional and service-related components of the experience. Customers’ Emotional Satisfaction decreased by 2 points where the Service Satisfaction decreased by 1 point. Customers are looking for Emotional connections with brands- our results show that Emotional Satisfaction has double the impact on Customer Loyalty that Service Satisfaction has. This is unsurprising since consumers across the globe, including South African citizens, live in a constantly changing society on a macro- and micro-level. Citizens experienced lack of trust, fear of the unknown and loneliness on higher levels during Covid Lockdown.

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Digital channels are rated higher than human channels for the first time

Trust is the top Customer Loyalty driver in South Africa, followed by Reputation and Relationship. On the flipside, the biggest detractors from Customer Loyalty are a lack of Value for money, First Call Resolution (FCR) and high Customer Effort.

If the impact of lockdown must be complimented in a way, it gave businesses no choice but to up their game in terms of Digital interaction, Engagement, and Service. The Ask Afrika Orange Index® 2021 results showed that the experiences when engaging with Digital Channels (app, website etc.) are better than when customers engaged with Human Interaction channels (call centre, branch / store etc). It is important to note that we see that customers still prefer to engage with a Human Interaction channel when they have a complaint.

So, who took the lead in 2021?

From an industry perspective the building retail industry surprised everyone with a first time industry win.

From a brand perspective the top three places go to:

1. Pep
2. Woolworths Clothing
3. @home

The Ask Afrika Orange Index® 2021 Top10 Overall Winners are-

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And the Ask Afrika Orange Index® 2021 Industry Winners are:

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There was another Ask Afrika Orange Index record of 12 new industry winners.

So how did service ratings change in your industry and how does your brand stack up the competitors and across industries?

These are all questions that the Ask Afrika Orange Index® can answer. Ask Afrika Orange Index® enables a comparative view between and across industries. It is more than just a benchmark but enables investigative diagnostics whereby brands can identify pain points across the value chain that need corrective action. Should you be interested in finding out more about the Ask Afrika Orange Index® please contact us.

For more information on customised Orange Index report and sponsorship opportunities please contact:

Elzette Correia
Senior Client Strategist: Ask Afrika
email: az.oc.akirfaksa@ettezle