India consumers spent over 15B hours in 2024 to lodge complaints says report

By Anjali Sharma

NEW YORK – The Service Now Customer Experience report released on Tuesday stated that the Indian consumers spent over 15 billion hours in 2024 waiting to lodge customer service complaints.

The report analyzed the widening gap between rising customer expectations and the reality of service delivery. It surveyed 5,000 Indian consumers and 204 Indian customer service agents.

It highlighted that as many as 80 per cent of Indian consumers now rely on AI chatbots for essential services like checking complaint statuses and product recommendation

Yet, these same consumers collectively spend an astounding 15 billion hours on hold each year.

Sumeet Mathur, Senior Vice President & Managing Director, of ServiceNow India, said that “Businesses willing to transform to fill the customer service gap and meet rising demands for speed, personalization, and efficiency have a critical choice to make– embrace AI-driven efficiency or risk losing customer loyalty,”.

He said that despite AI agents and chatbots increasingly becoming a part and parcel of customer service, they have yet to significantly reduce customer service wait times.

The report pointed out “While some headway has been made– the average Indian spent 3.2 hours less time waiting for an issue to be resolved than the previous year–there is still a considerable gap between customer expectations and service delivery. This gap underscores the disconnect caused by siloed systems

It found that 39 per cent of consumers are kept on hold, 36 per cent are repeatedly transferred, and 34 per cent believe companies deliberately complicate the complaint process.

The customer patience is wearing thin, with 89 per cent of Indian consumers willing to switch brands due to inefficient service.

It concluded that over 84% of consumers indicated they would leave a negative review online or on social media after a poor service experience.