Next.Direct Conference – IT: the user-friendly face of customer service

Global spending on information technology to attract and keep customers is growing at more than 40 per cent a year and it’s not hard to see why.

Indeed, every 1 per cent rise in investment in customer relations management (CRM) IT can push up revenue and people productivity by three to 10 per cent.

So says Rob Saultz, global alliances and channels director of Corepoint Technologies, IBM's new software division, and a speaker at the recent next.direct 99 conference in Sydney.

He says rather than spending on face to face meetings or branch offices, the focus is now on infrastructure which taps the larger marketplace, like Interactive Voice Response (IVR), call centres and the Internet.

Expenditure on call centres, which have become the frontline in acquiring and retaining customers, has grown by 140 per cent over the past three years.

During this time, the number of transactions done through call centres has rocketed by 1000 per cent while the number of those through branches has fallen by 50 per cent.

Huge growth can also be expected in Internet-based CRM. One reason is costs. Studies show that the total cost to a company in Australia of completing an Internet transaction is generally around $1, a figure which should fall as volumes rise.

This compares to a face to face meeting with a customer which costs about $150. Dealing with a telephone agent could cost $3 to $6, depending on what computer assistance the agent has, while each transactions through a robot agent, with no human contact, could set a company back by around 50 cents.

But costs are not everything. Saultz says consumers have their own preferences when it comes to contacting a company, depending on what they want to do.

For example, customers will use a call centre to apply for a mortgage but they will want a face to face meeting before they conclude the mortgage contract.

They will use the Internet to shop around for the best mortgage deal or to transfer funds, but they prefer Interactive Voice Response when it comes to finding out an account balance and a call centre when buying insurance.