Trust is one of mans key decision making criteria when meeting new people for the first time. I mean think about it. If you want to buy a house, select a new computer or even decide where to take your partner for dinner for that special occasion, what do you do? You ask someone for their advice. In the case of house you’ll ask lots of people from a range or agents or realtors to friends and family. And of course you are right to. It’s a big outlay. It also affects your life experience. If you select the wrong house you’ll be reminded every time you walk up to the front door.
What about those more personal experiences like dinner with your partner? Get the wrong advice and consequently pick the wrong type of restaurant for a birthday or anniversary and you’ll have just wasted your money. No romantic end to the evening for you.
Casino Genie, independent online casino aggregator, recently published a survey which had some quite surprising results. The bottom line is that online casinos are losing thousands of customers every day.
Jon Hingston, Customer Satisfaction Manager at Casino Genie, says, “Our survey of 2,500 online gamblers from over 100 online casinos shows that players want a more personal service. And one the key criteria of that personalized service is trust. Players want honesty and integrity. Sure this will cost the casinos more to manage but the upside will out weigh those costs. The survey figures show that players stay with a casino 5 times longer when customer service meets their expectation. So given this information what we now need to understand is how we can help casinos deliver this and fun experience too.”.
So why does trust matter so much. We talking about hardened gamblers who just want to win money right? No. Hingston tell us, “The bulk of players are new to gambling. And there is huge community of people who are put off by the complexity of the games, the language that we use is confusing and they feel out of their depth. If online casinos want to win advocates for life they need to be ‘your friend’. Behave like the friend at school who taught you the rules of baseball or English cricket without laughing at you. Then you can both enjoy the game more.”
Of the 2,500 online casino players that Casino Genie surveyed just over 1,400 had been playing less than 12 months. Only 24% were loyal to one casino. Over 62% played at four or more casinos.
Interestingly of those players who had been gambling for more than 12 months, there was still a huge amount of players playing at four casinos or more, 48%. Alarmingly for online casinos 78% of these cited poor customer service as a reason for their fickleness. Only 4% of players had found site which they were entirely loyal too. But here is the killer fact. Every one of those 100 people said that the reason they stuck with their casino was because of ‘superb customer service’. Makes you think doesn’t it. Why isn’t my casino like that?
Not one of those 100 gamblers played at a ‘Top 20’ casino. The small casinos are acting smarter, reacting quicker and playing the boutique game to try and compete in this sector. And its starting to have an effect.
So let’s get back to the trust issue. home Another figure that came out of the survey. 82% of people asked said they would try a new online casino if recommended by a friend. 68% of people said that they would try a new online casino if it was ‘highly recommended’ by other players.
So in summary, customer service and trust is what players want. The question is will the big casinos listen?