This year Croatia ranks fifth among six countries in the region on the quality of service at points of sale, dropping one place from last year, a survey has shown.

It was the 15th survey of service quality, conducted between June 1 and July 7 by the Heraklea mystery shopping agency in cooperation with similar agencies from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, and Slovenia.

Mystery shoppers visited a total of 800 points of sale in various sectors, including car industry, petrol stations, financial industry, retail, tourist and hospitality facilities, and service facilities.

The survey, entitled “Regional Service – GUEST”, measured the basic elements of service quality, such as greetings, determining customers’ needs/desires, knowing the product, suggesting an additional product and thanking for the visit. The title of the survey is the acronym for Greet, Understand, Explain, Suggest, Thank.

Croatia fell from fourth place in 2022 to fifth place, scoring 69.68%, 2.7 percentage points less than in 2022. It scored best in the “knowing the product” category (88.24%) and worst in the “suggesting an additional product” category (30.87%). It scored 82.77% on greeting, 75.33% on thanking and 62% on determining customers’ needs/desires.

Compared with last year’s results, Croatia recorded fell in four categories, the largest (of 9.8 percentage points) in the “suggesting an additional product” category. The only increase (of 4.67 percentage points) was observed in the “determining customers’ needs/desires” category.

This year Bosnia and Herzegovina topped the ranking, with a score of 83.93%, down by 3.69 percentage points from last year. It was followed by North Macedonia (78.63%, up by 3.04 pp), Slovenia (78.60%) and Montenegro (73.33%). Serbia ranked last, with a score of 66.31%, down by 1.61 percentage points from 2022.

Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia scored below this year’s regional average of 73.94%.