Croatia ranks fourth among the countries in the region according to the quality of services at points of sale, behind Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia and North Macedonia, state agency Hina said on Thursday, citing a press release by the Heraklea mystery shopping agency.

This is the 14th regional service quality survey done by Heraklea and it was conducted from 1 June to 8 July in cooperation with mystery shopping agencies from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Slovenia and Serbia.

Mystery shoppers visited 800 points of sale in Croatia in various industries: car industry, petrol stations, financial industry, retail, tourist and hospitality facilities and service facilities. They measured the basic elements of quality service, such as greetings, determining customer needs/desires, knowing the product, offering an additional product and thanking for the visit, according to the acronym of the English word GUEST (guest) for Greet, Understand, Explain, Suggest, Thank.

This year’s survey shows that Croatia fell from second to fourth place (72.47%), experiencing the biggest drop in results compared to the other countries, of 4.01 percentage points compared to last year.

Croatia achieved the best result in the category of product knowledge, while the area requiring improvement is offering an additional product.

Comparing this year’s results to last year’s, Croatia’s ranking deteriorated in four categories, with the biggest drop being in identifying the customer’s wishes/needs.

The only improvement compared to last year was achieved in the product knowledge category, of 2.44 percentage points, to 94.57%.

Best result achieved by Bosnia and Herzegovina

The best result this year was achieved by Bosnia and Herzegovina, 87.67%, an improvement of 10.21 pp compared to last year.

It was followed by Slovenia with a result of 81.03% and an increase of 5.19 pp, and North Macedonia, whose score improved by 7.08 pp.

Croatia, along with Montenegro and Serbia, was below this year’s average score of 75.29% and ranked fourth with a score of 72.47%.

Montenegro ranked fifth, scoring 71.24%, while Serbia dropped by 1.35 pp to sixth place, with a score of 67.92%.