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| Press Statements |
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| CCZ launches customer satisfaction survey on supermarkets |
| 16th July 2005 |
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The provision of reliable, quality services in Zimbabwe at present is problematic. The customer is increasingly no longer treated as king. At many service points, consumers have to contend with long queues to get shoddy services at the hands of very impolite workers. Some service providers are just bent on increasing prices without offering commensurate services. Huge, erroneous bills for unused services, congestion at till points, poor customer reception, and the sale of poor or expired products without any due regard to a redress policy, are some of the problems consumers encounter daily in the market.
Consumers need information, and knowledge about products and services they consume so that they make the right choices. It is their right. It is their right too, to get redress, if they are short-changed in the buying process. The Consumer Council of Zimbabwe is, therefore, glad to launch a Supermarket Price and Service Surveillance Survey. The satisfaction survey, whose results will be published every month, will look at the pricing of goods and services, but more broadly at the services offered by supermarkets. Based on this information, the CCZ will come up with a Cheapest Supermarket of the Month and the Supermarket Offering the Best Services. The winning supermarket will be given a CCZ seal of approval, by so doing enhance consumers? confidence to shop with them, not just based on price attractiveness, but on quality service delivery.
The CCZ hopes that the survey will enrich consumers and urge them on to look for best quality goods and services based on informed choices. We also hope that the results will whip into line errant supermarkets and encourage them to improve their services.
Below are some of the factors we will be using as benchmarks or standards for best services:
Time spent at the till or point of sale
Product pricing
Staff Customer Relations and Reception
Accessibility of price tags
Cleanliness of retail outlet
Observance of sell-by dates
Compensatory policy (redress mechanism)
The customer satisfaction survey will be modelled along similar lines as the family of six basket methodology. So supermarkets must brace themselves for this survey, as we will make public our findings. The CCZ will, in due course, widen the survey to other service areas e.g. banking, electricity, and water, among other areas.
In a related development, the CCZ has installed a toll free line, as an incentive to consumers to register their complaints with us. As the CCZ, we believe that consumers have cause to complain and we encourage them to call us on
0801 2222 280. |
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