A survey released this week by Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, at its G-Force conference, held in Berlin, reveals there is a substantial gap between what C-level executives commit to and customer service agents see.
Genesys commissioned the survey, which polled 927 companies across 47 countries. Genesys PR and AR director David Radoff says this was a bid to understand how adept business had become at aligning the executive suite with the customer service organisation.
Despite all customer care professionals and C-levels surveyed, stating that customer service impacts a brand's identity, only 20% of each group stated their contact centres, one of any organisation's primary customer contact points, are strategic.
The survey further revealed that: "Most C-level executives underestimate the emphasis their organisation places on efficiency, and overestimate how easy their organisation makes it for customers to purchase during interactions.
"For example, 55% of C-level executives believe their operations use average speed to answer as a critical metric, compared to 70% of customer service professionals. On a worldwide basis, 67% of all organisations considered this a key metric."
Additionally: "Among C-level executives, 41% think they measure the experience in self-service by quality rather than just cost savings, but only 35% of customer service professionals think so. At the same time, 36% of C-level executives think their customer service is measured on revenue per call, when in reality only 28% of customer service professionals validate that notion. Among global respondents, 30% say they measure revenue per call."
Perhaps of more concern to organisations is the customer feedback gap. The survey states: "There is a major (16%) gap between C-level execs, who believe they are capturing important customer feedback, and the views of customer service professionals. While 78% of C-level execs think their company is doing a good job of collecting information on customer and market needs and passing it on to sales, only 62% of customer service professionals agree."
On a positive note, Genesys says: "Many companies have already implemented or plan to initiate priority projects over the next 18 months, to address misalignment. And 36% of companies worldwide plan to improve visibility into customer processes by identifying the root causes behind customer interactions and behaviours through analytics."
Partner awards
In addition to releasing the survey results, Genesys handed out its EMEA partner awards.
Eleven partners were recognised for having invested a significant amount of resources toward joint customer service solutions, including working on joint planning and execution with Genesys to influence revenue, the company stated.
Best EMEA partner for 2007 in Africa was Intelleca, which beat Genesys' other African partners Dimension Data and Alcatel Lucent for the honour.
"The Genesys Partner Programme provides a framework for partners to leverage our technology leadership in order to increase their own market share and value," said Paul Segre, president and CEO, Genesys.
"Each of our winners this year clearly went above and beyond to motivate the market to adopt new ideas, facilitate joint technology offerings with Genesys and develop integrated solutions for the marketplace."
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