[May 05, 2007]

Talisma Survey Finds Aussie Financial Service Lacking

By David Sims

TMCnet Contributing Editor

Australian financial services organizations are "missing vital opportunities to deliver outstanding customer service due to a lack of enabling technology," according to enabling technology vendor Talisma.

Talisma assessed the customer service capabilities of Australia’s top 43 financial services firms in April 2007, finding that only 42 per cent of institutions answered e-mails within 24 hours, phone service was "much better than e-mail service" but lacked personalization, none of the firms surveyed offered online assistance or chat services, only five per cent of firms offered Web self-service, and "only one firm gave customer service reps access to a unified customer interaction history." None offered any type of on-line proactive assistance or collaboration to help customers complete complex forms or transactions.

“Financial services is Australia’s third largest sector, accounting for 7.5 per cent of GDP and growing quickly, with new entrants to the market each year, keeping it highly competitive,” said Paul Bunn, Managing Director of Talisma Australia.

While ninety-five per cent of the 43 companies surveyed offered an e-mail-based service, with a 42 per cent response rate within 24 hours, "-54 per cent of all emails were never answered," raising questions about "the impact of such a failing on customers."

And just how important is customer service in a part of the world not exactly noted for its strong tradition of customer service? Evidently increasingly so: The diminishing level of customer service has caused almost half of Middle East consumers to switch service providers within the past two years, according to results of a survey published by Visionary Embassy.

The online survey of more than 1,700 Middle East consumers was conducted with the purpose of identifying prevailing consumer satisfaction levels of customer service offered in varying industries including retailers, telecom and internet service providers, satellite TV companies, property developers, hotels, airlines, banks and financial institutions, according to VE officials.

The purpose of the survey was to gain a broad understanding of consumers' satisfaction with customer service, particularly as technology has assumed a more prevalent role in the delivery of service across industries.

While more than half (54 percent) of respondents reported they quit doing business with a company in at least one industry category in the past year as a result of poor service, some industries fared worse than others. Retailers suffered the greatest number of customer defections due to poor service, which was selected by 21 percent of respondents, followed by banks (17 percent), property developers (13 percent), airlines (11 percent) and hotels (10 percent).

At the same time, CRM and other enhanced technologies didn't seem to be improving consumers' satisfaction with customer service. Nearly six out of 10 (57 percent) of respondents said customer service technologies such as automated phone service and live online chat had not done anything to improve the level of service.

"Good customer service takes a lot of work to assemble within an organization -- it has to be integrated into the mainframe functionalities. Esteemed organizations are relatively aware of what frustrates their customers and focus primarily on understanding their customers' varying preferences and intentions," said Farid Gasim, who carries the title of Chief Economic Ambassador. "They use vital data such as the survey findings to tailor services more towards the consumer's needs and thus foster consumer loyalty."

The VE survey found which aspects of customer non-service most frustrated consumers. Being kept on hold on the phone too long was selected by 72 percent of respondents, having to repeat information to multiple service representatives 70 percent, sales personnel over-promising and under-delivering 66 percent, and that old favorite, the inability of customer-service agents to answer client inquiries, irritated 59 percent.

David Sims is a contributing editor for TMC (News - Alert) Net. For more articles please visit David Sims' columnist page.

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]

Discussions: