Customer retention is important to every business, but loyalty is hard-won, especially when a single bad customer experience can now be easily amplified to a mass audience in a matter of seconds. 

Ground Control Data is an Australian technology business that helps advertisers understand, optimise and predict marketing outcomes by partnering with the world’s leading digital consumer intelligence platforms. Two of Ground Control’s partners have co-authored a report on the key drivers of customer loyalty, using a combination of social listening data from Brandwatch and panel-based research data from GWI from the US and UK.

Here, we summarise the key learnings from the report, but additionally, highlight new insights using Australian data from both Brandwatch and GWI, and go further with a search insights platform, Pi Datametrics. Obtain a copy of the original full report here.

International insights

• Complaints about a poor customer experience are far greater than people going out of their way to demonstrate loyalty or advocacy. People expect a good experience and you have to really stand out to be celebrated online. 
• Delivery issues are the most prominent reason consumers detract from top retail brands, while affordable pricing drives advocacy. 
• Sustainability is becoming more and more of a hot topic, especially with too much plastic used in shipping and packaging.
• Consumers love to support smaller businesses, but were forced to shop at big stores due to the pandemic due to logistical issues.

The past 18 months helped drive the value-seeking behaviours of consumers. The survey data has shown that in mid-2020 67 per cent of consumers said they would delay big purchases, and in October, 39 per cent of consumers said they were actively looking for discounts or offers in the last three months.

Meanwhile, in Australia

There are some nuances for the Australian context that deviate slightly from the US and UK data. 

• Locally, whilst the detractors are more vocal than the advocates, it is pretty close.
• Whilst shipping is also a major concern, it’s poor customer service that really drives people to engage in negative social posts in Australia. 

Mirroring the international data, 68 per cent of Australians say they would delay big purchases and 35 per cent of Australian consumers are actively waiting for discounts or offers before purchasing.  Consumers say they would wait for an offer or discount, rather than switch to a cheaper brand or a cheaper version of the product from their preferred brand. 

Search provides a layer of intent

Tracking the search trends of hundreds of keywords relating to shipping, delivery and the major e-commerce players for the past three years, we can see that in Australia, searches for eco-friendly packaging/shipping have more than doubled in the past year, reflecting a combination of consumers seeking out stores that offer this, and the retailer themselves finding suppliers.

There has also been an even greater surge in demand for same-day delivery, which increased over 250 per cent in Australia last year. Whilst there are the expected searches for flowers and gift delivery on the same day, there’s a broad range of product categories where consumer demand is strong for same-day delivery: groceries, alcohol, clothing, pet supplies, mattresses, plants, electronics, and pharmacy. 

Summary

There are consistent themes across markets around the factors that drive customer loyalty. Although Australia toes the line on some key elements, there is local nuance to pay attention to, and in particular, it’s the quality of customer service that drives people to shout about your brand online, for better or worse. Demand for click-and-collect, same-day and next-day delivery services are undoubtedly affected by communities in lockdown but expect this will have a longer-term shift in behaviour.

Offering the right options, the right delivery partners, and making it easy to find on your website will be important contributing factors to consumer perceptions of customer service, especially if coupled with a discount. Even with all the best processes in place to deliver a great customer experience, there will inevitably be the occasional slip. Ensure you have the means to keep track of how your brand is being discussed online so you can quickly dampen the flames of customer controversy. Brandwatch and Pi Datametrics can help you keep an automated eye out on social and search.  

About the methodology

Social, survey and search data are complementary for researching consumer behaviour. Social data enables an unfiltered view of unprompted public consumer opinion, and through Brandwatch, it’s possible to track how that changes over time with up to 10 years of data and over 1.4 trillion posts. Search is the ultimate indicator of behavioural intent, and we can see whether the nature of volume of conversations online translates into a shift in how consumers search for topics or brands.

Survey data allows researchers to ask precise questions that can help explain the reasons why certain trends are observed in the social and search data, and it crucially provides in-depth demographic data that is missing from the other sources. This triangulation with user-friendly platforms opens a whole world of opportunity for modern research teams, both in-house or external, to conduct agile, cost-efficient and actionable research, which can be adopted by retailers themselves to keep a finger on the pulse of consumers. Learn more at Ground Control Data.