Customers: Best response to coronavirus crisis Best response to coronavirus crisis

Czech customer care is getting more and more refined. Two thirds of brands received better feedback compared to last year, with restaurants, fast food, retail, and logistics becoming the fastest growing sectors – those are the findings of thea KPMG study “A Friend Indeed”, whichthat focuses on the effects the covid-19 pandemic had on business-customer relationships. TheA list of the top 100 brands included in the study is led by Air Bank who provides the best customer experience, followed by Zásilkovna and Tank Ono gas stations.

The fourth and fifth place were taken by Yves Rocher and Equa Bank, respectively, followed by Spotify, dm, adidas, Tchibo, and Decathlon closing the top ten. The fourth year of the study analysed a total of nine sectors of the Czech economy.

“Major changes can be seen in the use of digital space, with improvements in social corporate responsibility and customer loyalty management. In general, brands have been trying to be more forthcoming, and we expect the customers to have higher expectations in this area in the future. And obviously, shopping at brick and mortar stores faced radical changes,” says Tomáš Potměšil, KPMG’s leader of the Customer and Strategy team.

This year’s survey included a new parameter called “covid response”. KPMG’s data show that customers were most appreciative of sectors that provided basic needs in times of crisis: retail (supermarkets), and logistics, and pharmacies as part of retail. TSP scores were also good, while the worst scores in this parameter were achieved by sectors that generally score on the lower end (energy and TSP) and sectors who were hit most by the crisis, especially hotels and travel.

A move to the online world can be seen in all sectors that have even the smallest option to do so. Financial service providers sped up the development of their digital platforms significantly, including mobile apps and cashless payments. Online shopping, entertainment, and communication are now experiencing a real boom, with more experimental formats, like virtual tours, also profiting from the crisis. People have discovered new brands and services as well, like an option to order directly from the manufacturer.

Many companies used the crisis as an opportunity to strengthen their relationship with their customers – according to KPMG’s June survey, 16% of small and medium companies responded to the crisis by investing in customer experience. For some, it was a matter of surviving and creating new distribution channels, for others an opportunity to maintain the new-found interest of the clients, or a way to grab the place on the market that was vacated by the competition.

“Seeing the proactive approach some companies have adopted, it is well possible that the overall customer experience outcome turns out positive – the unpleasant effects of the crisis will fade as the economy restarts while the new, positive habits will remain,” says Tomáš Potměšil. The general customer experience in Czech Republic has been improving for the third year in a row now, and this year, the NPS (Net Promoter Score) that indicates how likely the brand’s clients are to recommend it to others, has grown as well.
 

The data for the “A Friend Indeed: The Top 100 for Customer Experience in the Czech Republic” study was collected in April and May of 2020, with 5033 Czech respondents participating in the study. The sample was representative of the adult (18+) Czech population from an age and gender perspective. In total, 189 brands over nine sectors were evaluated by respondents who had dealt with the brands over the past six months – a simple familiarity with the brand was not enough to be included in the study. KPMG uses six pillars to describe the customer experience: personalization, integrity, expectations, resolution, time and effort, and empathy. The maximum score in each pillar is 10 points.

The ranking, brand scores, sector rating and profiles of successful brands can be found at www.nejlepsi.cx.