By Jonnah Lynne Pante
The drive to digital information has made Philippine businesses see the importance of utilizing communication tools and technologies in enhancing their customers’ experience, leading digital communications company Avaya Holding Corp. revealed.
A joint IDC-Avaya survey on customer experience presented at the Experience Avaya Philippines event relayed that 60% of Filipino companies and organizations ranked communications tools that enhance customer-to-employee engagement as most important to attain their digital transformation initiatives.
Among these customer-to-employee engagement tools include customer-to-employee interaction through inbound phone call, websites, customer portal, email, SMS/chat platforms, social media, mobile customer app, and in-store experience.
Seventy-one percent of Philippine businesses are willing to invest more in messaging, 58% prefers chat applications as the favored customer engagement method over the next two years, while 42% said that their company will focus on using social media to beef up customer service.
Companies also gave utmost importance to the usage of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, bots, and scripts, as major channels in bolstering customer experience in the age of digital transformation.
“The Philippines will lead the world in terms of being able to have the best practices on how to blend bots and scripts, augmenting them with human capabilities,” IDC Philippines Associate Vice President for Financial Insights Michael Araneta said.
Aside from the growing importance of communication tools, among the key global trends on customer experience the survey observed include the (1) significant improvement in enterprises’ capability to understand customers, (2) emergence of new channel types allowing businesses to serve a truly omni-channel customer, (3) integration of communication into more mission-critical business processes and (4) measurement of customer experience success through combination of customer satisfaction and variety of customer service KPIs.
Adding insights to the survey results, Ferdinand Macatangay, Avaya Country Manager for the Philippines said that the future of customer experience lies through digital transformation and the use of advanced technologies.
“Businesses in the Philippines understand the importance of good customer experience, and the increasing role that communications solutions will play in delivering it,” Macatangay said.
“These insights, especially the improvements on specific key business areas, highlight the importance of digital transformation. Experience Avaya Philippines is a platform for our customers, partners, and us to discuss the challenges faced by enterprises and how these can be overcome using technology. We understand this and support our customers in their digital transformation journey, using our innovative communication solutions,” he added.
The Avaya-IDC Philippines Enterprise CX survey was participated by 24 organizations in the Philippines across different sectors of telco, financial services, banking, business process outsourcing, hospitality, government and manufacturing sectors from February to March 2018.