SINGAPORE, 15 AUGUST 2008 – There is a disconnect in Asia Pacific between C-Level executives (CEO/CIO/CFO/CTO) and customer service professionals, according to a survey of companies in the region by Genesys, an Alcatel-Lucent software company.
The survey revealed that customer service professionals in Asia Pacific have higher standards than most of the world, but they are also extremely realistic about assessing whether their companies are living up to them.
For example, customer satisfaction is a more important metric in Asia Pacific than anywhere in the world (82 per cent versus 70 percent of companies globally), the research noted. In addition APAC companies are much more rigorous than their peers in measuring such indicators as call duration (83 per cent versus 68 per cent) and average speed to answer (84 per cent versus 67 per cent).
High AP aspirations
“The good news is that companies in Asia Pacific are aiming very high,” said Michael McBrien, senior vice president, APAC Field Operations, Genesys. “The bad news is they have a lot of work ahead of them to live up to their own expectations. The key lesson to be learned from this survey is that it is critical to engage top executives in both the strategy and execution required to make excellent customer service a reality.”
The survey (“The Executive Disconnect: The Strategic Alignment of Customer Service in APAC”) studied 212 companies which is part of a global project covering 47 countries and 927 participating companies. In Asia Pacific, it covered 12 countries, including Australia, China, Hong Kong, Japan, India, Indonesia, Malaysia New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.
Nearly a quarter of the participants worldwide held senior C-level titles, and 20 percent of the respondents were C-level in APAC. Respondents included more than 350,000 Asia Pacific-based contact centre agents, as well as back office, branch and field level support professionals across occupations and industries.
Key findings
The survey also found that only few APAC companies give their contact centres high strategic marks. Only 36.9 per cent of APAC companies view their contact centres as strategic. And only 11 percent track their performance based on strategic measures such as customer lifetime value, well below the 21 percent in the global survey.
Contrary to the realities the research revealed, top executives in APAC think they are doing a better job than the evidence indicates. According to the report, the C-level executives in APAC are consistent with their peers worldwide in assuming they are delivering on their promise of making customer service more strategic – even when front line professionals say they are not.
On a positive note, the study highlighted that many companies in the region have already implemented, or plan to initiate, priority projects over the next 18 months to address their misalignment.
According to the survey, two significant areas of investment are helping companies become more dynamic: extending customer service to branch offices and virtualisation. In this regard, Asia Pacific is, however, a leader in operating multiple contact centres as a single entity (virtualisation) with 49 per cent currently virtualising or planning to do so, compared to only 40 per cent worldwide. Asia Pacific is second only to the United Kingdom (50 percent) in virtualisation.
