One on One with Accenture's Robert Wollan

Accenture recently conducted its ninth annual Global Consumer Pulse Survey, which covers 12,800 customers in 32 countries across 10 industries. This year's survey took a close look at the impact of customers switching providers, which leaves a potential $1.3 trillion (with a T) in revenue on the table, essentially up for grabs to whichever company can woo them away. While this may sound like customers are wishy-washy or inherently disloyal, Wollan says in fact customers are learning to be disloyal by repeated failures by service providers to anticipate their changing needs and the inability to solve "old school" customer service problems. Accenture Sales & Customer Services global managing director Robert Wollan shared his insights on this year's survey and the root causes of this "switching economy".

Consulting: How would you characterize consumers' attitudes towards the current level of service they receive?

Wollan: It would be easy to say customers are fickle. That they're switching more regularly, and that they're almost a disconnected or disloyal base. But the real answer looking across industries and geographies is a very different picture. You see a picture of a customer who frankly wants to stay. Some 82 percent of customers say a company could have done something to keep them. They want to stay. They objections they're raising are outdated issues we should have solved years ago. So we're training customers to be disloyal. Training them to switch slowly but surely over time as opposed to finding a customer that wants to stay loyal, wants consistency of execution and wants capabilities that matter to them more broadly. Consulting: How has customer behavior changed?