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A suprize last year, a delight this year

08 November 2007

In 2006, it beat 65 companies for the top award and now, in 2007, PEP has beaten 70 companies and has again come top overall in the Ask Afrika Orange Index Survey.  PEP is the undisputed champion of customer service and, managing director, George Steyn is absolutely delighted about it. 

“At PEP, our focus is on delighting our customers – a delighted customer is a satisfied customer.  We believe that everyone deserves dignity and respect and we treat everyone - our people and our customers - that way.  We strive to be the friendliest retailer in the country so this survey shows that we must be getting something right.  This is really great news and I thank everyone at PEP for making this possible.”

PEP scored 82%, which is 10% higher than the runner-up, Medihelp. The average score of the clothing industry was 65% compared to PEP’s 82% and the overall average across all sectors was 58%.

The survey, which has been benchmarking service in South Africa since 2001, measures criteria such as staff friendliness and knowledge, responsiveness and empowerment to deal with requests, reliability, empathy and valuing of customers. These criteria are then evaluated across several channels: branch, contact centre (telephone), internet and intermediaries. The study aims to serve as an indicator of South African companies’ state of service quality. Computer-aided telephonic interviews were conducted between May and August 2007 with just under 6 000 randomly selected South Africans across 12 industries.

Ask Afrika’s MD, Andrea Rademeyer explains:  “For PEP to win again just proves that this company not only understands service and how important it is but also embraces the culture of good service at every level of its operation. PEP clearly has an ethic of working from the inside out in valuing its customers.

“PEP outperforms both the industry and overall service average by far. Customers definitely expect more from PEP than from other retailers and the survey shows that they do receive more.”

South Africa is increasingly following the worldwide trend to shift its focus to customer-focused and quality service-orientated business practice. In the past, South Africa was often associated with poor service. This led to the establishment of The Orange Index in order to give companies insights into the level of service quality in their company and its impact on customer loyalty.

Notes to journalists

1.PEP is Southern Africa’s biggest single brand retailer with just over 1 400 stores

2.The 12 sectors in the survey: Food Retail, Fast Food, Clothing Retail, Petro-Chemical, Automotive, Long term insurance, Short term insurance, Banks, Medical Aid, Telecommunication, Airline and Government.

3.A full report on the survey is included in Finweek (8 November 2007).