Study: Majority in SG don’t think businesses are authentic or empathetic

Customers in Singapore don’t think businesses are authentic or empathetic with 40% of Singaporeans experiencing poor service due to the sentiment that 'customer service is not listening to me' – a 19% increase from three years ago.

Moreover, 33% of Gen Z respondents believe that organisations deliberately make it difficult to seek help, with over half of customers in Singapore claiming to have lost faith in businesses' ability to resolve their issues.

This was according to ServiceNow's inaugural Customer Experience research. The research aims to address Singapore's billion-dollar customer service gap where an estimated SG$1.24 billion in wages is lost due to slow and poor service. 

Don't miss: Study: 63% of consumers in APAC trust businesses over the government

According to the report, employees are spending an average of 4.7 working days to resolve each customer issue. Meanwhile, customers lost a staggering 30 million hours waiting on hold for customer service in 2023.

In fact, the average Singaporean loses two full working days (16.1 hours) on hold, said the study. As such, one in four Singaporeans have lost confidence in companies' effectively managing issues.

From the 1,030 Singaporeans surveyed in the study, the top qualities of excellent service identified were speed, empathy and transparency. Customers also want to be connected with the right people at the right time to have issues resolved too, said the study. 

What is driving poor experience? 

According to the study, 60% of customers are frustrated at having to repeat their issues to multiple people, while 53% of customers are frustrated at being transferred to multiple people and departments. 

Meanwhile, 42% of customers cited waiting on hold as a driver of poor experience. Another 39% cited waiting for someone to get back.

When customers feel disconnected, businesses feel the impact, added the report. With poor customer service experience, 53% of customers now believe that customer service staff have no power to make decisions. An additional 48% of customers reported that businesses show a lack of ownership between different departments. 

Finally, 36% of customers believed that poor record-keeping of previous interactions contributed to poor service experiences. 

Closing the gap 

In Singapore, a customer's loyalty is captured by demonstrating swift results, sensitivity to their needs and clear communication. 

To close the service gap leaders must take back control of their customer's journey and integrate everything into a single platform that can streamline services and automate admin tasks, explained the report. 

It added that ushering in enhanced, more intuitive experiences that boost productivity across the organisation can help close the service gap too. 

Interestingly, Singapore's government leads the way in customer service, by industry, with a third of people preferring its services over other businesses. 

Faith and trust are essential to businesses and customers. This is especially since consumers in the APAC region are most trusting of business (63%), as compared to other institutions such as NGOs (59%), government (51%) and the media (50%).

This was according to the 2024 Edelman Trust Barometer report for APAC that found that consumers are most trusting of key institutions and technology as compared to the rest of the world.

In the APAC region, with the introduction of innovations into society, public trust levels in businesses were 65% and 62% for the government. These were higher than the global levels - 59% for business and 50% for government.

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