Survey Finds Consumers Value "Digital Home" Services

While consumer technology companies focus on bringing the most advanced digital technologies to market, they face increasingly sophisticated, fickle and price-sensitive consumers. The typical response is to add functionality and cut technology delivery costs. But this causes industry players to miss out on a major opportunity to differentiate through services.

As consumers upgrade to digital homes, they face increased complexity, but do not want to become their own CIOs, as it were. They want assistance with maintenance, monitoring and trouble-shooting. They want new services to improve how they live and work. And they want it on-demand—delivered as part of an existing contract, as a monthly subscription, or as a one-off service call.

We surveyed 10,170 digital technology consumers for our Digital Home Study. The survey sampled the local Internet population in nine countries: China, Italy, Canada, United Kingdom, Taipei, Germany, United States and Japan. We balanced respondents across basic demographic factors, including age, gender and education. Finally, we aggregated the results from the individual countries to provide a global view.

The study had several objectives:

• Develop an awareness of consumer preferences for digital technologies
  
  
• Understand current levels of consumer satisfaction as well factors that drive adoption as well as barriers
  
  
• Determine current and future usage of digital home solutions by consumer intention, such as imaging, video and education
  
  
• Uncover the weak links in delivering a positive consumer experience—from R&D, to marketing, sales, service and support

Only one in three respondents agrees that manufacturers understand how they use technology. When asked if they would go to a manufacturer to fix a problem, 82 percent of respondents said they would not. Opinions of telecom providers are only slightly higher, with almost one in two respondents saying that they are committed to providing quality services.

Service switching is high, with 35 percent of respondents canceling service within two years of purchase. Minimal brand loyalty means that consumers have no qualms canceling services if they can easily find better or cheaper service.

Despite this evidence of commoditization, consumers are interested in – and willing to pay for – services. Furthermore, they say services do matter. Almost three in four respondents say good service makes them more likely to be a repeat customer.

Accenture findings provide some interesting implications for consumer technology players striving for high performance:

• Proactive services are necessary to reduce consumer complexity. Companies will need to provide on-board and effective remote services, both online and via telephone, to minimize delivery costs.
  
  
• Use new value-added services as distinct revenue streams. Consumer technology players can create new revenue streams from value-added services. Companies ought to ensure that they package and execute these services effectively.
  
  
• Services differentiation is essential. To differentiate their services effectively, consumer technology players must deepen their customer understanding. They also will need to mass customize services at the point of delivery—online, in the home, on the phone or in a retail outlet.
  
  
• Products and services need to be managed as one entity. Consumer technology players that thrive in the digital home marketplace will manage products and services businesses holistically (for example, iTunes/iPod).
  
  
• Partnerships will be critical. The combination of hardware, software, connectivity access, content, field support and proactive/reactive services is too much for one company to handle on its own. Intelligent partnering and collaboration among hardware, content and service companies is going to be essential.

To achieve high performance in a commoditized market, consumer technology players must shift their mindsets. Instead of seeing services as a drag on profitability, they have to start seeing them as indispensable core elements of their overall offerings. The brands that succeed in the years ahead will be able to deliver a digital lifestyle through bundled, best-of-breed products and services.

Trusted technical services delivered at pre-sale, point-of-sale, installation and post-sale should define the consumer experience. This will drive recurring sales, enabling companies to lower the cost of these transactions.

On top of this, if services are packaged and executed effectively, they can become an offsetting revenue stream in their own right. How can companies achieve these goals? We believe that companies must:

1. Provide better consumer education
2. Ensure that their technologies work
3. Focus on enhancing use and enjoyment after the sale is complete

Globally, consumers rank monitoring home security (63 percent) slightly ahead of monitoring health (62 percent), while 57 percent say they want technology to help them work from home, and 54 percent say they want to be able to download and watch videos on TV. Forty-seven percent want to be able to access all photos/home videos from any device in the home, while 44 percent want to be able to take courses or training on their PC or TV.

Individual Results of the Digital Home Global Consumer Poll by Country

Canada

China

Germany

Italy

Japan

Taipei

United Kingdom

United States