Social media is more important than phone calls or email for customer experience

Source: Genesys infographic.

Genesys, a provider of customer experience (CX) and contact centre solutions, today released a study which reveals that more than a third of companies in Asia Pacific (37%) consider social media as one of their most important CX channels.

The study* shows that while face-to-face communications still ranks as the top CX channel, social media is now more important than both phone calls and email interactions.

“Consumers are going digital more than ever,” said Bruce Eidsvik, Senior Vice President of Genesys Asia Pacific. “In Asia, we hardly think twice when shopping online or posting our feedback and enquiries on companies’ social media channels, therefore it makes sense that we now lead the world when it comes to digital CX engagement. As economies across the region continue to move towards more service-based economies, Asia’s leadership in digital engagement places it as the pioneer that other regions will look to for CX innovation.”

The EIU study shows a direct correlation between CEO engagement in customer experience and profitability. When CEOs lead CX initiatives, those initiatives are more likely to transform a company’s future success. The survey found that 58% of companies reported much higher profitability than their competitors when the CEO is in charge of customer experience, and 59% experience better revenue growth as a result of prioritising CX investments.

Source: Genesys infographic.

In Southeast Asia, investment in customer experience is growing faster than other regions, with 42% of companies boosting investments by more than 10% in the past three years, with an expectation that they will increase by the same margin over the next three years.

The study also found that CEOs in Southeast Asia are more likely to have the final say on CX initiatives than CEOs anywhere else in the world. “Ambitious companies are driving large investments in customer experience initiatives to adapt to the digital communication channels customers are demanding,” said Charles Ross, Senior Editor at the Economist Intelligence Unit and lead researcher of the study.

“By prioritising CX and placing the CEO in charge, companies are taking an extra step to drive revenue growth and improve profitability.”

There is still room for improvement however. Southeast Asia (24%) is the second lowest sub-region in Asia Pacific by customer ratings of their overall experience with companies. Therefore, organisations in the region need to step up their game if they are to make the most of their growing investments in CX technology.

Interested?

The global and Asia Pacific reports are available for download
View the complete infographic

*Conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit, the survey of 516 senior level executives in 21 countries explores the impact of customer experience efforts and leadership on business performance. A third of the respondents were from Asia Pacific, including Southeast Asian markets like Indonesia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

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Differing executions of talent management in Asia

Source: ECN.

Talent management has increasingly become a strategic priority for business leaders fighting for managerial talent across Asia. 

A survey of the Economist Corporate Network's (ECN's) 550 member companies across Asia has found that 95% of CEO respondents feel they are actively involved in talent management. However, the nature of their role and the extent of their involvement varies widely.

Aligned for Success? Strategy, talent management and the role of the CEO in Asia reveals that the involvement of CEOs in human capital issues centres most heavily on strategic and planning activities, such as assessing the future shape of their workforce needs, and organisational design. Many CEOs admit to doing less about the developmental aspects of talent management such as nurturing key skills, training programmes and mentoring future leaders.

Highlights from the report include:

· A high proportion (90%) of respondents are raising their investment in internal talent development, but 65% indicate that they have no clear metrics in place to measure the benefit gained from training programmes.

· CEOs identify leadership, strategic thinking and an ability to manage across cultures as the top three skills missing among their current management bench.

· While nearly all CEOs claim to be the leading voice for, and closely involved with, talent management, most currently devote less than 20% of their time to talent-related issues. At the same time, 43% feel they should be giving more time to developing talent in their companies.

· CEOs are most closely involved with the planning aspect of talent management with fewer than half closely involved in actually developing talent.

· Asia-based CEOs indicate that their HR heads are more closely involved in strategy development than their counterparts in Europe and North America.

· 89% of respondents claim that their talent management strategy is informed by and aligned with their core business strategy.

Justin Wood, Director of the Economist Corporate Network in South-east Asia, said: “Competition for talent is intensifying in many parts of Asia. In Southeast Asia, for example, the value of foreign direct investment inflows reached record levels in 2013, overtaking China. These foreign firms are all looking for management talent to drive their investments. At the same time, local firms in Southeast Asia are also growing quickly and investing internationally, both across the ASEAN region, as well as further afield. This makes the battle for top talent especially intense.

“CEOs regularly claim that people are the number one priority at their firms. Yet all too often a gap exists between their rhetoric and the reality. This is usually because of a disconnect between the CEO’s strategic vision and the implementation by HR leads. This new report reveals how business leaders in the region are now looking to bridge this gap by adopting a more strategic approach to talent management, aligned with their core business strategies.”

Read the Southeast Asian edition of the report here. 

*To explore the challenges of securing and developing the right people with the right capabilities, skills and mindset for business leaders in Asia, the ECN surveyed CEO clients about their role in talent management and the extent to which talent management is aligned with core business strategy. Findings of the regional survey were discussed with CEO-level focus groups in Tokyo, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore and these insights were used to help inform the final report.