One third of Aussie businesses lack customer service strategy: Study

A new study has revealed a third of Australian businesses do not have a customer service strategy in place.

The Customer Service Strategy study, conducted by callcentres.net and funded by IBM, found that Australian companies are falling behind in the service stakes, despite a lack of strategy being linked to poor business performance.

callcentres.net director, Dr. Catriona Wallace, said the study reflected what most in the industry were thinking — having a customer service strategy is vital to overall enterprise success.

“Finally there is a study that provides evidence to show that service strategy is a significant driver of business performance, in particular revenue generation,” Wallace said in a statement.

“Those organisations that have a true enterprise-wide service strategy, rather than an operational approach to service, are gaining the greatest benefit.”

Those few CIOs with a strategy can breathe easy, however, with the study finding that these companies are most likely to achieve revenue performance as well as employee engagement goals.

The study also found that 81 per cent of businesses rated a customer service strategy as one of the top three most important priorities, but minimal adoption numbers were related to a lack of financial and human resources.

A total of 107 Australian businesses were included in the study, with respondents who influenced business decisions in the customer service strategy space being questioned.

Another significant finding of the study were that there is a connection between organisations with a mature strategy and the implementation of analytics software and multi-channel options for customers.

The findings come as Frost Sullivan earlier this year predicted that the Australian contact centre applications market will increase, including a shift to Cloud computing and a strong focus on social media.

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