Customer service in Australia is getting worse, with 90% of Aussie customers that have stopped doing business with a company following a bad customer experience.
In addition, consumers believe it takes six different interactions to resolve an issue.
The findings were released in an Ovum survey yesterday.
According to Aussie customer experience expert Cyara these findings are alarming, yet not surprising.
Cyara CEO Alok Kulkarnis said while companies invest in new omnichannel experiences, delivery of service can be forgotten.
"Many companies want to push innovative solutions and platforms to provide their customers with reliable omnichannel customer service, but most of them don’t invest in the right resources nor follow the right steps, and end up providing poor customer service that impacts their reputation, and customers’ loyalty.
“Providing a seamless experience across all channels is challenging because most companies built their customer service with a range of different technologies.
"And when they try to link all these platforms together to unify the customer experience, things go wrong.
"The first step in pushing a new customer service upgrade or innovation is to invest in optimising your customer experience innovation lifecycle through automated testing and monitoring.
He said the testing and monitoring phase is also key and must include omnichannel testing, discovery and monitoring of IVR, chat, and mobile self-service platforms.
“By identifying defects earlier in the development cycle you can reduce development costs by up to 80%. Indeed, fixing issues earlier on is less costly than once your system is up and running and that you need to interrupt your whole customer service platform for several hours.
“Once your system is up and running this is not over.
"You need to continuously organise check-ins and monitoring, and regularly prepare for your worst case scenario. That’s how you will get a seamless and flawless experience that will give you a competitive edge and keep your customers’ trust and loyalty intact."