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Research Confirmed: Decline in Service Quality at Sales Points in Croatia

This year, Croatia ranks fifth among countries in the region in terms of service quality at sales points, a drop of one place compared to last year, according to the ‘Regional Service-GUEST’ research conducted by the Heraklea agency in collaboration with agencies from the region.

This is the 15th research on service quality in the region, conducted by Heraklea from June 1 to July 7 in cooperation with mystery shopping agencies from Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), Montenegro, North Macedonia, Slovenia, and Serbia.

Mystery shoppers visited a total of 800 sales points from various sectors – automotive industry, gas stations, financial industry, retail, tourism and hospitality facilities, and service facilities.

The research measures the basic elements of service quality, which are: greeting, identifying customer needs/desires, product knowledge, offering additional products, and thanking for the visit, according to the acronym of the English word GUEST (gost) for Greet, Understand, Explain, Suggest, Thank.

In this year’s research, Croatia fell from fourth to fifth place, with an overall score of 69.68 percent, which is 2.79 percentage points lower than in 2022.

Croatia achieved the best result in the category of product knowledge (88.24 percent), while it has the most room for improvement in the category of offering additional products (30.87 percent).

As in the previous year, the greeting category ranked second with a score of 82.77 percent, the thank you category ranked third (75.33 percent), and the category of identifying customer desires/needs placed second to last, fourth, with a score of 62 percent.

Comparing this year’s results achieved by Croatia with last year’s results, a decline was recorded in four categories. The largest drop, by 9.80 percentage points, was recorded in the category of offering additional products.

The only increase compared to last year was recorded in the category of identifying customer desires/needs, by 4.67 percentage points.

Best Result Achieved by Bosnia and Herzegovina

With the best service in the region, BiH stood out again this year, achieving a score of 83.93 percent, although it recorded the largest drop in results compared to other countries, by 3.69 percentage points compared to last year.

North Macedonia is in second place this year with a score of 78.63 percent and the largest increase of 3.04 percentage points compared to 2022, while Slovenia is in third place with a score of 78.60 percent.

Montenegro is in fourth place with a score of 73.33 percent.

Croatia, along with Montenegro and Serbia, is below this year’s average of 73.94 percent, occupying fifth place with a score of 69.68 percent.

Serbia also recorded a decline of 1.61 percentage points this year, placing it sixth with a score of 66.31 percent.

The category that achieved the best overall result in all six countries in the region, as in previous years, is the product knowledge category, with 93.81 percent, although it records a drop of 0.58 percentage points compared to the previous year.

As in previous years, the lowest-ranked category is offering additional products, which achieved an overall score of 38.17 percent, and also recorded the largest drop compared to the previous year – by 10.21 percentage points.

When viewed by sectors, this year the largest increase of 8.13 percentage points and the best result (89.63 percent) were achieved by service activities, pushing the automotive industry from its long-standing first place.

Retail has been consistently highlighted as the sector with the most room for improvement for several years, and this year it achieved a score of 67.56 percent, reflecting a decline in service quality compared to the previous year, by 3.14 percentage points.

A decline compared to the previous year was also recorded at gas stations, by 3.29 percentage points.

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