TOA Technologies’ “Cost of Waiting” Survey Uncovers £1.25bn+ In Lost Wages
As Consumers Left Waiting At Home
Annual Report Finds £177.11 Average Annual Cost to Each British Consumer to Keep In-Home Appointments
LONDON, UK - November 3, 2011 - TOA Technologies, the only on -demand provider of enterprise class mobile workforce management and customer experience management software solutions, has released its annual “Cost of Waiting” report evaluating the economic impact of waiting for in-home services among consumers and businesses. The 2011 report found that the cost of waiting for goods and services to be delivered to consumers is conservatively £1.25 billion in lost wages, with more than 7 million Britons having taken unpaid leave in the last year to wait for an engineer or delivery. 76% of Britons waited 3.6 times a year for cable/satellite TV, Internet, utilities, retail home deliveries or other mobile workforce-related in-home services in the past year. Wait times averaged 4.3 hours and according to the values respondents, the annual cost of waiting per individual is £177.11.
“It’s clear from this year’s rsquo;Cost of Waiting’ survey that customer service needs to be a top priority for businesses in the current climate, not only because it can negatively affect a company’s performance but because poor service around wait times has financial penalties for a company’ own customers. Waiting has a huge potential impact on both individual customers and the economy as a whole. Broadband, cable, satellite, retail and utility companies can actually help consumers save lost earnings at a time when so many people are looking for ways to conserve every dollar,“ said Yuval Brisker, co-founder and CEO of TOA Technologies. “All they need to do is respect the consumers time by reducing the ’wait window,’ by keeping their promises and arriving on time, by sending the right person to do the job the first time and by communicating effectively throughout the process using every available means. These companies can positively impact people’s lives by offering more flexible scheduling, more guaranteed appointment times and more advanced technology coordination tools to assure on-time arrival. With TOA’s flagship solution, ETAdirect, we have revolutionized field service management by focusing on helping our customers narrow their wait windows through time-based predictive analytics using sophisticated performance pattern recognition. A tool like ETAdirect provides many further efficiencies in improved customer service and ends up not only pleasing customers, who carry that message to the world via social media, but also returns the investment with massive benefits through an intelligent, strategic reduction of operational costs.”
The Annual “Cost of Waiting” Survey found that nearly a fifth (19%) of respondents said that they had lost wages after taking unpaid time off from work to wait at home for a service appointment or delivery. Over a third (36%) of respondents earn less than £20,000 per annum, which magnifies the impact of forfeiting a day’s wage to wait at home without knowing when a service provider will arrive.
The impact was felt across all of the UK: only 40% of respondents who sacrificed earnings to wait in for goods or services lived in the South of England. Welsh respondents reported losing the largest amount of wages per person, on average £190.40, and respondents in Northern Ireland reported a loss of at least £163.47.annually.
Another important finding from the survey is that 77% of respondents suggested that on-time arrival has the biggest single impact on their opinion of a company and 64% of consumers said they would recommend a company for arriving on time. However 36% of respondents said they had complained about a company to friends because they had been stuck at home waiting for a delivery or engineer, and the impact of these comments is greatly amplified when those complaints are voiced over social media sites.
TOA’s ETAdirect provides a complete predictive platform to manage the mobile workforce with a focus on improving customer service. It delivers easy to use mobility and management applications that enable service providers to get the right technician with the right essential skill set within a narrow, guaranteed service window.
For a full report of the survey results, including detailed findings from the UK, US, Germany and Brazil, and TOA’s 2011 “Cost of Waiting” media kit, please visit: http://toatech.com/costofwaiting.
About TOA’s Annual Cost of Waiting Survey:
IBOPE Zogby, on behalf of TOA Technologies, interviewed 1,026 US adults, who said they had waited for at least one service or delivery appointment in the preceding 12 months. The interviews were conducted online, between September 9th and September 15th, 2011 and included a sampling of IBOPE Zogby International’s online panel, which is representative of the adult population of the US. The full dataset for the US has also been statistically weighted according to the most current census data for region, age, gender and education to more accurately reflect the population. The margin of error is ±3.2 percentage points. Discrepancies in or between totals are due to rounding. TOA conducted its first “Cost of Waiting” Survey in 2009.
About TOA Technologies
TOA Technologies is the leading provider of on -demand mobile workforce management applications for large and medium-sized enterprises. ETAdirect, TOA's patented platform, improves customer service while dramatically reducing operational costs and delivering immediate return on investment. As the industry’s only complete on -demand solution using predictive, time-based analytics, ETAdirect reduces customer wait times while increasing field workforce efficiency. TOA's system deploys quickly, is highly configurable and is easily integrated with existing CRM solutions. Named Best of Breed and Visionary solution in Gartner’s 2010 Magic Quadrant for Field Service Management, TOA Technologies is headquartered in the United States and has offices in Europe and Latin America. For additional information please visit www.toatech.com or follow us on Twitter @toatech.
*The results of this study are based strictly on a BOPE Zogby opinion survey. The survey results are not intended to reflect, nor do they reflect, the specific service levels of any company. No inference should be drawn about the customer service experiences of customers mentioned in coverage of the survey prior to deploying the TOA Technologies solution.
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