South Africans are spending increasing amounts of time online as they transition to the latest smartphones.
Indeed, a recent ProxyRack report finding the average South African spends 9 hours and 38 minutes per day online – making them the world’s heaviest internet users.
Now a new study by Sweden’s Subtonomy into South African users’ online behaviour, finds:
* 97% are using at least one social media platform;
* 88% are watching the latest movies or streaming TV;
* 86% are paying bills or reading news online;
* 74% are using their mobiles to work from home or to access video conferencing apps;
* 56% are gaming on their handsets; and
* 28% are controlling smart home applications.
What all of these advanced data applications have in common, is that they require a robust, stable and always-available network – and this is precisely where customers say there’s a big problem, with seven in 10 admitting they’re frequently experiencing problems with their connectivity.
Fortunately for service providers, South African users don’t blame them when their service is disrupted: eight out of 10 days they do a great job on support. But service disruption from issues like loadshedding have become such a challenge the customer support quality is now seen as a key deciding factor when choosing a network.
Increasingly, South Africans expect their network service to be fast, convenient, proactive and digital.
* Fast – 53% of customers say they’re only prepared to wait a maximum of 5 minutes to access service.
* Convenient – 39% of customers expect round-the-clock support, and in the 50-54 demographic this rises to 56% of customers.
* Proactive – 94% of customers say they’d like to be notified about planned maintenance ahead of time, so they can take mitigation actions, and want to be notified in real time about any outages.
* Digital – although 51% of customers are resolving their problems via the call centre, 30% said digital self-service is now their preferred support channel, and a further 56% said they’d choose self-service via their mobile app IF their service provider could troubleshoot and fully resolve problems from within the app.
“All networks experience both planned and unplanned problems at one time or another,” explains Fredrik Edwall, executive vice-president: sales and marketing at Subtonomy. “But what differentiates service providers is the ability to rapidly pinpoint exactly what’s causing their customer’s problem and then quickly resolve it, while at the same time keeping the customer informed and updated throughout.”