by Catriona Campbell, Founder, Foviance
The experience of shopping with a tablet PC is much less satisfying than with your desktop computer. Although the iPad reinvented the tablet computer, unfortunately it appears that the actual surfing experience does not live up to expectations. In a survey of nearly 5,000 people undertaken by Foviance, a global Customer Experience consultancy, it’s clear that the customer experience of tablet computing is relatively poor – customers are up to 18% less happy with their tablet experience compared to their desktop PCs.
The study, which looked at what customers thought of customer experience in the retail, banking, travel and mobile phone markets in the 2nd Annual Customer Experience survey, commissioned by Foviance in association with Econsultancy.
Whilst companies are rushing to create apps on Apple, Android and Nokia stores it seems that they are not delivering for customers. The Apple store now has more than 200,000 apps, far more choice than the 40,000 products in a branch of Tesco but apps are not delivering the experience of their full-blown desktop cousins.
According to the survey, people are looking for efficient customer service (51%) and high-quality products (39%) at a low price (49%). Apps don’t appear to be robustly designed and have service issues. One customer, Muir MacDonald, explained that his new Skype app for iPad2 stopped working when he updated iTunes and he said “I delete a lot of apps that just don’t work as suppliers tend to ignore complaints and don’t fix them”.
Foviance also surveyed 650 companies and asked them about their commitment to customer experience. Only 10% felt that apps were ‘integrated’ with their overall customer experience, as compared to 48% with their website experience.
Companies are also failing to keep pace with the changes in technology. 40% of companies said that the major barrier to improving customer experience was ‘complexity of customer experience’.
Other findings:
- In general, people seem to be fairly happy with their customer experience, for example, 87% of people thought their overall retailing experience was good or excellent
- 69% of people will recommend a company based on a good customer experience
- Customers are increasingly moving online, however, the face to face experience is still important, with the call centres and brochure being relegated to less important ways of buying
- Mobile customer experiences are generally weaker – even if you’re a mobile phone company!
Download the report from the Foviance website
Catriona is one of the most recognisable faces in the digital industry, thanks to her numerous public speaking and media engagements.
With degrees in Psychology and Human Computer Interaction (HCI), and having previously worked at BP, General Electric and Barclays Plc, Catriona founded Foviance (previously The Usability Company) in 2001 and consults on strategic accounts.
She was voted one of the Top 50 most influential people in the digital industry by Internet Magazine (2002) and was named by Tim Berners-Lee as one of the Top 100 individuals to be recognised for their contribution to the development of the internet over the last 10 years.