Croatia once again ranks third in the region for the quality of customer service, behind Bosnia and Herzegovina and North Macedonia, the "GUEST-Regional Services" survey showed on Wednesday.

This is the twelfth survey testing the quality of customer service in the region, conducted between 15 June and 15 July by the Heraklea mystery shoppers agency in cooperation with similar agencies in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia and Slovenia.

“Mystery shoppers” visited a total of 800 retail outlets in those countries – car dealerships, banks, petrol stations, small stores, supermarkets, telecommunication retail outlets, tourism-hospitality venues and other services.

The criteria to measure customer service included greetings, identifying shoppers’ needs, knowledge of the product being offered, offering additional products and thanking shoppers for stopping by, based on the acronym GUEST that stands for Greet, Understand, Explain, Suggest and Thanks.

Croatia scored 75.1% and ranked third, the same as last year.

Croatia again scored best on knowing the product on offer. Croatian retailers were also good when it comes to greeting shoppers and thanking them for stopping by. Their weaknesses included not identifying the need of shoppers and offering additional products.

The best result this year was achieved by Bosnia and Herzegovina (86.7%), followed by North Macedonia (82.5%), Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia and Montenegro.

The best customer service in the region was experienced in car dealerships (97.2%), while supermarkets scored 58%, recording the greatest fall in quality compared to last year.

The biggest improvement in the quality of customer service was achieved by banks, increasing by 10.3 percentage points to 78.53%.