Contact Center Solutions Featured Article

April 17, 2008

Australian Companies Suffering Poor Customer Service Delivery

By Susan J. Campbell

Call centers and contact centers are first and foremost the customer service touch point between the customer and the company. If the center fails to deliver the proper customer service to the customer or fails to properly resolve an issue or answer a question, then the contact between the customer and the company was pointless and could have also contributed to lower satisfaction for the customer.
 
Poor customer service appears to be almost an epidemic for Australian businesses. A new study has shown that almost half of consumers are able to have their problems solved by their service providers. The only hope for these service providers in maintaining their base is that maybe these customers are not jumping ship, as the service is likely to be the same when dealing with the competitor.
 
Commissioned by IT vendor BMC Software (News - Alert), the survey found that 42 percent of respondents said their suppliers could not adequately solve their problems, while another 20 percent had issues with inexperienced staff manning their calls. The survey reported that six out of 10 consumers had changed supplier in the past year.
 
The problem that these providers must deal with, aside from initiating strong changes in their customer service deliverables, is that more customers are changing providers than just those that are unhappy with their service. If only 42 percent are receiving poor service, yet 60 percent are making changes, what is really driving this churn?

Customer churn, according to this survey, was estimated to cost local businesses about $1.5 billion a year, with telecommunications companies as the biggest losers. The study also indicated that the telephone, mobile phone and broadband companies suffered the most from customer turnover, ahead of electricity providers, banks and insurance firms.
 
Pricing was the main factor for leaving a company as cited by 79 percent of respondents. A lack of incentives to stay loyal was in second place with 48 percent of respondents indicating this problem as the reason for making a change. The implementation of both exit interviews for customers that captures their reason for leaving, as well as options for incentives to stay would be strategic moves for companies in fighting this churn.
 
This study indicates that there is still much work to be done within the customer service divisions of local Australian companies. Aside from implementing customer-facing technologies and applications to drive service, these companies would also benefit significantly from investigating further what is driving customer churn and respond accordingly.

Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMC (News - Alert) and has also written for eastbiz.com. To see more of her articles, please visit Susan J. Campbell’s columnist page.

Don’t forget to check out TMCnet’s White Paper Library, which provides a selection of in-depth information on relevant topics affecting the IP Communications industry. The library offers white papers, case studies and other documents which are free to registered users. Today’s featured white paper is, Best Practices in Agent Retention brought to you by Enkata.


Related Contact Center Solutions Articles

    Indosoft Boosts Q-Suite ACD's Ability to Retain Calls in the Event of Server Faults

    If you run a mission-critical call center and one of your servers goes down, so you risk dropping that very important call? Given the number of serious storms that have battered the U.S. in recent years, more and more call centers might be said to be mission-critical: emergency services call centers, utility customer support, 411 information call centers and insurance companies are just some of the organizations that get busy under high-pressure circumstances. [ Read More ]
    05/23/2013

    How to Really Improve Customer Experiences, REALLY!

    In the last several weeks as a result of the Interactive Intelligence Interactions 13 event, and a variety of industry developments, I have been exposed to not just to the latest and greatest in contact center solutions. It has also been my good fortune to interact with some very knowledgeable people from across the broad spectrum of community stakeholders-customers, resellers, channel partners, industry analysts-literally from all over the world. What they all have in common is an intense focus… [ Read More ]
    05/23/2013

    iPhonik to Open Sri Lanka Contact Center for Asian Alliance Insurance

    iPhonik has signed a deal to open a contact center in Sri Lanka for Asian Alliance Insurance (AAI) which will now employ local Sri Lankan agents. [ Read More ]
    05/23/2013

    LiveOps selected in AlwaysOn OnDemand Top 100 list

    LiveOps, Inc announced it has selected AlwaysOn, a business media brand connecting and informing the entrepreneurial community, in its list of AlwaysOn OnDemand Top 100 Private Companies for the third year in a row. [ Read More ]
    05/23/2013

[ View all Contact Center Solutions Articles ]

FOLLOW US

Contact Center Solutions Glossary of Terms

Featured Whitepaper

    Microsoft® Lync® in the Contact Center: Integrating with Customer Interaction Center™ to Provide a Barrier‐free Customer Experience To implement contact center functionality, organizations using Microsoft Lync Server 2010 can follow the unified communications blueprint of open standards interoperability and integrate to a contact center solution of their choice. Customer Interaction Center (CIC) from Interactive Intelligence is a proven best of breed contact center solution that merits consideration ...

Featured Success Story

    Contact Center Solutions Featured Success Story
    Interactive Intelligence all-in-one IP communications software suite integrated with Microsoft Lync helps Bentley save $200,000 annually.

Featured Product Demo

    Contact Center Solutions Interaction Analyzer™
    Interaction Analyzer™
    Real-time word and phrase spotting. Alerting. Analytics. Scoring. Coaching. Watch how Interaction Analyzer turns every moment, of every past and present call, into data that lets you deliver an exceptional customer experience.

Featured Resources

Ask the Expert

Press Releases