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Cape Town - The 16th Ask Afrika Orange Index Awards for the service industry were presented in Johannesburg recently.
If they want to reap a (healthy) harvest, businesses need to remake themselves daily, market research company Ask Africa CEO Andrea Gevers said at the awards ceremony.
"Those businesses that we see here this evening are the ones that have succeeded in continuously remaking themselves,” said Gevers.
The service sector drives 60% of SA's gross domestic product (GDP), accounts for 63% of employment and 74% of capital formation.
When Ask Afrika started the Orange Index 16 years ago, SA businesses started at a low base, but have steadily climbed year on year, it said.
In the early stages of the benchmark, telecoms and banking were rated the highest, they are now at the bottom end of the ranking. Meanwhile the automotive and food retail industries have maintained top ranking status consistently since 2012 and again held the top two positions, with food retail coming in ahead of the automotive industry for the 2017/2018 awards.
“Service is a people business which makes it a moving target,” said Gevers. To be successful the sector needs to look at what is happening in society and to approach things from the consumers’ point of view.
“We’ve seen that organisations that obsess about themselves or their immediate competitors, will only ever edge forward, they will never leapfrog. We’ve seen this in business and we’ve seen this in politics,” said Gevers.
This year’s Top 10 winners are:
- - Woolworths Food;
- Donna;
- Cape Union Mart;
- Miladys;
- Audi;
- Sportscene;
- Burger King;
- Roman’s Pizza;
- McDonald’s;
- Woolworths
Ask Afrika managing director Sarina de Beer provides some insights into developing trends.
Technology is top of the trends
The success of customer services can largely be attributed to their investment in advancing technologies and systems. Self-help channels and bots are allowing businesses to deliver on time and more efficiently. But while services are improving there is also a slow shift towards declining emotional satisfaction and a loss of connectedness as a result.
Perfect not all it’s cracked up to be
The flipside of the convenience of technology is that consumers are developing an unrealistic expectation of personalised perfection that makes it difficult to deal with the inconsistencies of human behaviour.
Ironically, while consumers get the simplicity and clarity they desire from systems, they are becoming increasingly emotionally dissatisfied and lonely.
Comfortably numb behind our emoticons
It might be more comfortable for consumers to deal with bots and processes but it is resulting in disconnectedness and increasing emotional numbness. In a world where humans can rely on a preselected range of emoticons to hide behind online, and curate a personality and lifestyle for others to admire, emotional range is becoming stunted and artificial.
A quest for meaningfulness
The customer services industry is no longer about selling a product or service it’s about creating an experience, preferably one that stirs a positive emotion. Successful marketing messages are those that create desirable value statements.
Medical aid is no longer just about covering medical costs. It’s about a healthy lifestyle. Cold drinks sell happiness and airlines sell dreams. Consumers no longer aspire to just owning a particular product they want that item to create meaning in their lives.
An increasingly exclusive ‘shared economy’
When talking about a shared economy or collaborative non-ownership, we tend to think it’s something new, like Uber or Airbnb, but the concept has been around for a very long time. Think stokvels or video shops or libraries.
To be a member a person needs to fulfil certain criteria and follow certain rules. To be a member of a library for example, you need an ID and proof of residence, you need to take care of the books you borrow and return them on time.
The difference now is that access to shared economies is becoming a lot more exclusive. To use Uber, for example, you need access to the Internet, a smartphone and in some countries, a credit card.
Tech is the new LSD
Tech has become our LSD and consumers expect too much on our own terms and have an elevated need for experience. Consumers expect more from tech and less from themselves and their personal relationships.
On the upside, tech has allowed people a voice and a sense of power parity. Platforms like social media support allow us to protest and people are using it to engage in narratives that increase their social capital.
We attach to what we nurture
More and more caring is being outsourced to professionals.
Take a psychologist as an example. By outsourcing problems, a person gets a full hour to talk about themselves. The professional can offer some insight, but they can’t talk too much and they can’t judge.
What consumers really need is sociable robots that marry sociability with the convenience of having everything adapt to specific likes and needs.
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