THE MAJORITY OF AUSTRALIAN BUSINESSES STRUGGLE ON CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

45% of organisations rank customer experience and advocacy as a number 1 or number 2 top business priority

Despite best intentions, only 12% of Australian organisations delivered outstanding customer experience – the benchmark needed to retain consumer loyalty – according to a comprehensive national customer experience study.

Even with 45% of organisations citing customer experience and advocacy as a number 1 or number 2 top priority, the majority were failing to deliver the kind of experiences required to retain customers in an increasingly competitive global marketplace. And less than half (45%) understood the impact of customer experience on profits and revenue.

The findings serve as a warning to organisations to invest in improving their customer experience strategies or risk losing out to smarter, more efficient competitors. This finding is based on the 2014 Optus Future of Business Report released today, which surveyed 550 decision-makers from business and government organisations and 5,000 customers.

The study was conducted to discover the strategies Australian organisations are employing to improve their customer experience and gauge where customers think businesses are succeeding and failing. Public sector organisations scored the lowest average customer experience rating with consumers (awarding 4.9 out of a possible 7 points for their quality of customer experience), compared to private sector organisations (5.3 out of 7).

“Aligning customer experience and technology strategy is key to improving customer experience, as well as improving profit and revenue through acquiring and retaining customers and growing repeat purchases. Yet our research shows that many organisations are struggling to make this a reality. Unless these organisations transform themselves they will slide backwards. Businesses need to provide a consistent experience, allowing customers to receive the products, services and support they want and expect,” said John Paitaridis, Managing Director, Optus Business

Good is no longer good enough: Businesses are also facing a more demanding customer that no longer accepts ‘good’ to be good enough. According to the findings, brand loyalty declined rapidly unless customer experience is ‘outstanding’. Ninety five per cent of customers indicated they were likely to remain loyal if they had ‘outstanding’ customer experiences, compared to those who had ‘good’ customer experiences (39%). This mirrors the finding for peer recommendations; only 17% of customers were likely to recommend an organisation to family, friends or colleagues based on a ‘good’ experience, compared to 58% who received a ‘very good experience and 94% when the experience was ‘outstanding’.

“We also saw that bad news travels fast, with 79% of people who had a bad customer experience taking some form of action, by telling someone else, researching a competitor, or posting their experience online,” Mr Paitaridis said.

Fifty one per cent of organisations claim customer experience is driving technology investments, but digital alone is no silver bullet. Although technology is often widely touted as the panacea for strong customer experience, Australian businesses that relied solely on IT and digital channel investments as a silver bullet while forgetting the value of the ‘human touch’, risked falling behind competitors that mapped their technology investments to an overall business strategy, integrated services and channels and give employees the tools they need to deliver great experiences.

Common traits among organisations that delivered an ‘average’ customer experience lack in-house skills (43%), buy-in or engagement from staff (38%) and a clear customer experience strategy (32%).

Additionally, organisations with well-aligned departments were far more likely to deliver strong customer experience. Only 5% of organisations delivering ‘outstanding customer’ experience have department alignment issues.

Numerous barriers to customer experience were cited. Many businesses reported budget constraints (47%), competing internal agendas or priorities (38%) and a lack of department alignment (33%) as the key challenges in delivering the ideal experience.

Other Key Findings:

Defining Outstanding Customer Experience – Providing digital tools are just the start

• ‘Friendly’ (45%) and ‘knowledgeable’ (36%) employees, interaction with a real person (35%) and feeling valued (33%), followed by fast service (32%) and taking minimal effort (31%) are areas where expectations were most likely to be exceeded for customers citing a great experience. However, businessesbelieved quality products and fast service were the number one means to providing an ideal customer experience (28%).
• Customers also rated responsiveness as highly important: Of those who felt that staff members were under-equipped, nearly 60% claimed it was due to their inability to respond to their enquiry while more than a third claimed it was due to being put on hold for long periods of time.

Preferred Modes of Interaction

• The research also showed that the preferred mode of interaction varies across the different stages of the customer journey. Ninety three per cent preferred some level of employee assistance in customer care and support but few wanted to handle their after sales problems with self-service web-features (7%). Interestingly, more than one quarter of customers indicated they don’t need any human contact (26%) whilst researching products and services.
• 39% of consumers have found the level of service to be the same across different methods and 51% expect this to be the case in 1-2 years.
• Cost (60%), technology integration issues (49%) and staff training (47%) were cited by businesses as key barriers to full integration of channels. However, while only 16% of organisations have fully integrated service channels today, many are optimistic. Full integration is expected to increase more than three-fold (53%) within 1-2 years.

The vision of an organisation with outstanding customer experience

The research demonstrates that providing great customer experience begins with:

• Aligning technology and customer experience strategies
• Empowering the workforce with the right tools
• Fully integrating channels and systems
• Aligning departments
• Having the right employee skills
• Having a strategy that is built on listening to your customers through a feedback process
• The right mix of channels that offer a consistent experience

“More businesses understand how a strong customer experience backed up by the right technology leads to better business outcomes. However technology alone does not provide a guarantee of good customer service and brand advocacy. Different departments need to align their strategies and objectives if technology investments are to deliver their full ROI. Good is not good enough – organisations must continually strive to deliver outstanding customer experience,” Mr Paitaridis said.

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Media contacts

Mihika Gujral / Wendy Ko
Text100 Public Relations
T: 02 9956 5733
E: sydneyoptusteam@text100.com.au

Optus Corporate Affairs

T. 02 8082 7850