This year Qudini surveyed 2,000 UK consumers to understand how often they had a poor experience within a retail store and to question what caused their poor experiences.
We found that:
As displayed in the infographic:
- 35% of customers have had at least 1 poor experience in the last year
- Within the UK, customers in London are most likely to complain about store experience
- The top four causes of complaints raised by 74% of customers, include: Long waiting times, Rude and Unhelpful staff, unavailable stock, lack of available stock
- These top four complaints are significantly higher concerns for consumers than issues such as store design, navigation or layout
- 88% of customers are likely to complain in the event of a poor experience:
- 55% complain directly to a staff member or a manager
- 42% tell their friends and family either in conversation or by text or email
- 21% voiced their complaints in on social media (the loudest channel possible, with the average post seen by 200 people).
Why these facts matter:
- With 88% of customers raising their complaint about their poor store experience, retailers face loss of revenue through both time impact to their staff and reputational damage from customers sharing.
- The same % of customers will complain using social media, as those who do nothing at all. With the average social media post being seen by 200 people, social media compounds the potential damage retail with sub-optimal experience face.
What you can do about it:
- Fortunately, people complain more about the transient and people-based issues such as staff and wait times, over that of store design and layout. All this can be fixed with better processes, training and systems (like Qudini), without heavy store redesign costs.
Download our whitepaper: To further understand these insights broken down by gender, age and geography demographics download our full whitepaper at:
Link to Whitepaper: The Cause of Customer Complaints in Retail
