These 10 companies have the best customer service in South Africa

Market research company Ask Afrika has announced the winners of its Orange Index Awards for 2018.

The awards benchmark service levels in South Africa across 167 major companies in 29 different industries.

This year over 12,000 interviews were conducted with South African consumers, comprising of 6,000 telephonic and 6,000 face-to-face interviews.

This sample is randomly selected and no credit or sample lists are used. The results were independently audited by auditing firm, BDO, and statistical consultant and sampling specialist, Dr Ariane Neethling.

“Methodological rigour is important because it ensures the robustness of the data,” explained Sarina de Beer, director of client experience at Ask Afrika at the awards.

“The response rate for the survey was above the industry norm of 75%. If the response rate for the survey is low, the data is not representative and cannot be generalised back to the South African population. Our results are double-checked for accuracy and the entire survey takes about 12 months to conclude, which is really fast for research of this magnitude,” she said.

Top 10 winners

These are the companies which achieved the highest service score overall.

“These top 10 winners all display service excellence and are able to meet growing expectations from customers who are faced with greater choice and display diminishing loyalty,” said de Beer.

“This year there was a strong dominance from the retail and automotive industries in the top 10 winners. It is interesting that the telecommunications and financial services industries are no longer winning as they used to a few years ago.

“The top three industries in the 2018/19 Ask Afrika Orange Index in rank order were the automotive, clothing retail and food retail industries,” she said.

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