New research by contact centre specialist Interactive Intelligence indicates that South African companies are keeping pace with the rest of the world in terms of customer experience delivery.
This emerged from three studies, one carried out online via ITWeb, and two carried out among professionals and customers by Actionable Research between February and March this year in seven countries - Australia, Brazil, Germany, North America, South Africa, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
Deon Scheepers, Strategic Consultant EMEA for Interactive Intelligence Africa, says the survey findings indicate that South Africa is in line with world trends in terms of customer experience delivery. "This is encouraging," he says. "In areas where South Africa may lag slightly, we are fast catching up."
In line with the rest of the world, South African enterprises see the importance of customer service excellence (84% of the online survey respondents rate it as extremely important; and 80% said their contact centre was very important in providing excellent customer service) and use multiple channels to interact with customers.
Comprehensive reporting and analytics are the top features desired by contact centre professionals around the world, including South Africa.
In South Africa, 67% of respondents are using CRM to support their customer experience; 54% are using customer feedback tools; and 44% are using IVR/self-service. Only 19% of companies said their technologies and processes were integrated across the various channels of customer touch-points.
E-mail scored the highest (97%) when the respondents were asked what method of interaction is used with their customers; live agent via telephone came in second, at 84%, and Web site preference came in third, at 76%. This is in contrast with customer preferences - customers rate voice contact as the most preferred method of interaction, followed by e-mail.
Web chat, SMS and social media are favoured by single-digit percentages of the respondents. Not being able to understand the agent is rated as the most frustrating part of an interaction.
Also in line with global trends, South African customers said a knowledgeable representative, a timely response and access to historical information about the customer's interactions with the company were important in delivering a great customer experience.
Sixty-three percent of South Africans would use Facebook to interact with a company for customer service, and more customers will use social media to praise a good service experience than complain about a poor experience. Forty-five percent of South Africans have shared a great customer experience on a social networking site, compared with a global average of 27%.
Scheepers points to the high use of social media by South Africans to spread the word about good or bad customer experiences as an indication of how customer experience impacts brand reputation and bottom line.
He says contact centres can no longer be seen as cost centres - they add significant value to the organisation. As such, they need to improve customer service by offering multiple-channel contact options, and integrating workforce and process optimisation and full integration with back-end systems.
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