80% of Singapore service professionals expect customer service to contribute more revenue in 2024

A report from Salesforce has found high expectations for customer service to contribute more revenue in 2024. With AI enabling greater personalised customer experiences, service teams are well-poised to maximise upselling, cross-selling and customer retention opportunities to drive revenue, the company said. 

The company recently released the new State of Service report, sharing insights from over 5,500 service professionals across 30 countries — including 100 from Singapore. The report covers the priorities, challenges, and strategies shaping customer service. It includes how service teams tap AI and data to increase revenue, efficiency, and customer satisfaction amid rising customer expectations.

According to the Singapore Business Federation’s National Business Survey, revenue growth (76%) and reducing costs (62%) were among the top priorities for business leaders this year, amid rising economic pressures and uncertainties. 

Insights for Singapore include:

Revenue generation 

The trend of viewing service as a revenue driver instead of a cost centre is accelerating, and service teams are investing in scaling up. This year: 

- Nearly eight in 10 (77%) service professionals expect more budget

- Seven in 10 (71%) service professionals expect more headcount 

AI to boost efficiencies

To scale service without sacrificing quality, professionals are increasingly turning to AI. 

- Nine in 10 service professionals are using or evaluating AI

- Nine in 10 service professionals plan to increase AI investments this year. The top three service use cases for AI: automated summaries and reports, customer-facing intelligent assistants, and service responses

- The majority of service professionals (97%) with AI say it saves them time 

Escalating demands

As customer expectations rise, service agents are feeling the squeeze. 

- Roughly two thirds (65%) of service professionals expect a higher case volume next year

- Eight in 10 service professionals (81%) say customers are more demanding than they used to be 

Data capabilities boosted 

Service professionals are stepping up their data integration efforts to fuel human agents and AI systems. 

- More than seven in 10 (72%) service professionals say better access to data from other teams would improve support 

- Nearly nine in 10 (87%) service professionals are increasing investment in data integration this year

“Service teams cannot afford to miss the moments in the overall customer journey to build stronger relationships and loyalty. Generative AI will allow agents to provide a smoother and more personalised customer service experience, freeing up time to focus on relationship building. At the same time, data and AI is enabling service teams to demonstrate their ability to drive revenue growth through greater efficiency and upsell activities,” said Gavin Barfield, CTO and VP of Solutions at Salesforce ASEAN. 

“AI is helping customer service agents be more efficient by reducing administrative tasks, which frees up time for them to focus on delivering personalised customer experiences and revenue generation. This will fundamentally shift the role of service teams within businesses from cost centres to profit centres.”

Explore

Download the State of the Service report

*Salesforce conducted a double-anonymous survey of over 5,500 service professionals between December 8, 2023, and January 22, 2024. Respondents were sourced from 30 countries and roles including service operations, service agents, mobile workers, service managers/directors, and service leadership/head of service. Additional methodology and survey demographic details can be found in the report.

ServiceNow: Customer service gaps causing Singaporeans to lose two full working days a year

Source: ServiceNow ebook, Customer Experience Intelligence Report: Addressing Singapore’s billion dollar customer service gap. A summary of the research findings. Singaporeans collectively spent over 30 M hours on hold because of customer service activities.

Singaporeans spent more than 30 million hours on hold to address a customer service complaint or issue, according to new research* by ServiceNow, the digital workflow company. The average person in Singapore spent approximately two full working days (equivalent to 16.1 hours) on hold last year, representing a loss of S$1.24 B in wages** nationwide.

Slow service solutions will see Singapore business’ operating costs increase, with employees spending an average of 4.7 working days to resolve each customer issue. According to Wee Luen Chia, MD, ServiceNow Asia, “The effect goes wider than just the individual businesses putting their customers on hold, it’s impacting Singapore’s competitiveness.”

Over a third (34%) of Singaporeans have had to resolve issues by themselves because of poor service, ServiceNow said. Customers ranked the top three frustrations with customer service as having to repeat their issues to multiple people/departments (60% of respondents); being transferred to multiple people or departments (53%), and waiting on hold (42%).

Respondents also suggested why the country is ‘stuck on hold’: 

- Staff not having any power to make decisions/resolve issues (52%)

- A lack of ownership and responsibility between different departments (48%)

- Inefficient communications within the organisations (48%)

- Customer service department is understaffed or overwhelmed (47%)

- Customer service staff not listening to me (40%)

Seven in 10 (72%) of Singaporeans have even less patience with bad service because of inflated costs; a similar number of locals (70%) think customer service is getting worse because companies are cutting costs.

One in three respondents believe that the time they spent on hold in 2023 is an increase from the previous year; over two out of five respondents (43%) believe the time it takes to resolve an issue has also increased. Another 43% of Singaporeans say their expectations of an organisation’s customer service department increased in 2023.

Seventy percent of Singaporeans also reported encountering service disruptions from key providers. On average, each Singaporean experienced two disruptions each year.

"Businesses that empower their employees and teams to collaborate quickly and transparently to resolve issues will succeed in 2024,” said Chia. 

"Frustrating wait times, little resolution and abrupt service disruption is costing Singapore its patience along with national productivity, too.”

The research also compared generational service experiences. Baby Boomers were left waiting the longest for service in Singapore, in 2023, spending an average of 5.7 days for their issue to be resolved. For younger generations, it takes around two days less on average to have their issues resolved (3.6 days).

More than half (56%) of Gen Z used self-service options more frequently over the past year to resolve issues and are less likely to speak to an agent, while 55% of Baby Boomers preferred to speak directly to a person (24% for Gen Z).

“A better customer experience starts with clearer visibility of where and why processes are currently letting customers down,” said Chia. 

“Only then can organisations invest in improving operations, to consolidate, augment, or replace the service gaps. Instead of betting on quick-fix solutions, customer experience requires a long-term commitment to building service roadmaps to progressively meet and even exceed Singaporeans’ evolving expectations.”

Good service is about being strategic around speed, empathy and transparency, ServiceNow said. Two thirds of Singaporeans think that having their issues resolved quickly is key to good customer service, with transparency and empathy frequently emerging as top themes for an exemplary customer experience: 

- Having the issue resolved quickly (67%)

- Getting through to someone quickly by phone, chat or in person (52%)

- Having an empathetic customer service agent who cares (47%)

- Being able to track progress (46%)

- Customer service agent knowing all your service details/interaction history (42%)

“Customers expect every part of a business to communicate and work together to solve their issues, fast. The research shows that customers attribute an organisation’s inability to solve issues to business siloes and disempowered teams,” said Chia. 

“To break this downward spiral and earn back trust, customer service needs to enable the service teams to do their best work. Routing the right people to the right process, at the right time will solve the customer’s issue fast - this is where automation and AI technologies can deliver their best work in the service of employees and also for customers." 

Explore

Read more about the research at https://www.servicenow.com/content/dam/servicenow-assets/public/en-us/doc-type/resource-center/ebook/ebk-customer-experience-intelligence-report.pdf (PDF)

*One thousand and thirty Singaporeans aged 18 and above took part in ServiceNow’s study, conducted by Lonergan Research in early 2024, to assess the state of service in Singapore within the past year.

**S$1.24 B estimated loss in wages was calculated at a median hourly rate of S$28.38 multiplied by the total average number of hours spent by workers resolving issues (17.9), multiplied by working population.

Qualtrics explores customer expectations in Asia Pacific

• Around 75% of Singapore and Hong Kong consumers indicate it is very or extremely important for organisations to respond to their feedback, markedly higher than Australia (64%) and New Zealand (52%).
• Among the four countries, Singaporeans are the most unforgiving as only 23% are likely to continue using that brand if their feedback is ignored.
• Nearly half of Singapore respondents (46%) expect a response from an organisation within the same working day.

Qualtrics, the experience management software provider, has released the results of its inaugural study* on customer experience (CX) in Asia Pacific. The Asia-Pacific Region’s Changing Customer Experience Environment report reveals differences in perceptions across different locations.

Qualtrics believes that companies are witnessing an “experience gap” – which is referred to as the gap between the experience that companies believe they are delivering and the experience their customers are actually receiving. Businesses today are awash with operational data (O data), which tells you what has happened. What they need to start collecting is experience data (X data), which will allow them to garner insights into why things are happening. Having both data sets will allow companies to reduce the experience gap and hence, positively impact the operational metrics of the business.

“Qualtrics is committed to helping brands in Asia Pacific measure, prioritise and optimise the experiences companies deliver across the four core foundational aspects of business – customers, products, employees, and brands. This study offers a deep dive into the region’s specific customer experience demands and offers key insights into the evolving landscape,” said Bill McMurray, MD of Asia Pacific and Japan at Qualtrics.

“Consumers in Asia Pacific have a wide variety of choice and if they do not like the service an organisation delivers, they will simply find another organisation that does it better. Ultimately, brands need to understand that nailing customer experience management can generate immense rewards, while getting it wrong will result in loss of customers, decreased revenue, reduced market share and even a damaged brand reputation.”

With 63% of business leaders in Southeast Asia having listed CX as their top business priority, according to Forrester, more businesses in the region will recognise the need to increase their efforts across all customer touchpoints, and international companies will also need to pay more attention to localising their customer management initiatives. The study reveals these top ten CX insights across Asia Pacific:

Customers demand action
Approximately 75% of Singaporean and Hong Kong consumers indicated that it is very or extremely important for organisations to respond to their feedback, markedly higher than Australia (64%) and New Zealand (52%).

Ignoring feedback is a fireable offence
On average, 39% of respondents in the Asia Pacific region are unlikely to continue doing business with an organisation that does not respond to their feedback. Singaporeans are the most unforgiving – only 23% are likely to continue using that brand if their feedback is ignored.

Fix it the first time
Just 2% of respondents feel that first-time resolution is anything less than moderately important. Some of the top frustrations cited are having to ask for the same information multiple times, and not having issues resolved the first time.

Respond today, not tomorrow
Nearly half of all respondents (46%) expect a response from an organisation within the same working day. Hong Kong customers appear to be more demanding, with 68% expecting brands to reply to their feedback on the same day.

Beware of the experience gap
Organisations must prioritise minimising the amount of effort customers exert to have their issues resolved. Companies must learn what customers’ value most in the experience you provide to them and then ensure that these aspects are executed at the highest level.

Make customers believe
Make sure your consumers know that you are listening and acting on their feedback. While Asia Pacific customers are keen to provide feedback, with 83% being likely to complete a customer experience survey from an organisation they deal with, 37% of these customers are uncertain as to whether organisations listen to and act on it.

Invest in the online experience
Online processes and offerings makes organisations more efficient and enable rapid, effective scaling. Results show that more than half of Asia Pacific customers (58%) are open to making the leap to online-only offerings.

Be one easy call away
While customers are more open to online channels for services and feedback, brands should still make it a point to have their phone numbers readily available to customers in the case they feel they need to contact the organisation. Eighty-four percent of customers thought it was important to have a company contact number on the home page or within a single click of it.

Put security first
Customers do not always “see” your security, but they want to know that it is there. Walk the fine line of having publicly accessible information about the company’s security measures, without revealing too much information to potential data thieves. Nine in 10 (87%) of the respondents believe that it is very important to be able to trust organisations with their customer data.

Welcome new technology
Half (48%) of customers would be satisfied dealing with an organisation staffed by artificial intelligence (AI). However, companies must understand which customer experiences to optimise through technology versus the human touch.

When it comes to consumers’ preferences in Singapore, locals ranked service (22%), quality of product (21%) and value for money (18%) as the top three attributes they value when dealing with an organisation. In terms of communicating with a brand, Singaporeans listed email (49%) as their preferred mode of interaction over other channels such phone (23%), online chat (15%) or face-to-face (13%).

On the other hand, the majority of Hong Kong consumers found the product quality to be far more important (55%), followed by service (54%), and trust (43%). In contrast, they prefer to interact with an organisation via phone (31%), instead of email (30%), face-to-face (20%) or online chat (18%).

The Qualtrics XM Platform manages the four core experiences of business - customer, employee, product and brand experience - on a single platform. The platform automatically analyses these touch points, helping organisations uncover key business drivers, predict future customer needs, and retain employees and customers.

Interested?

Download Qualtrics' The Asia-Pacific Region’s Changing Customer Experience Environment report

*The multi-country customer survey polled 1,100 consumers online across four Asia Pacific markets, namely Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand. Nationally representative samples of customers were obtained in each country, with fieldwork taking place in January 2017.

posted from Bloggeroid

Oman Air Sindbad members can now earn miles on hotel stays

Oman Air’s Sindbad programme, in partnership with Kaligo Travel Solutions, the travel and loyalty technology provider, has launched a new hotel rewards programme to enable Sindbad members to earn miles on hotel bookings at Kaligo.com. The partnership enables Sindbad’s frequent flyers to earn up to Sindbad Miles for expenditure on hotel bookings.

Mohammed Al Shikely, VP, Marketing, Oman Air said: “Oman Air is constantly looking for ways to reward our loyal guests. This new partnership will make it easier for Sindbad members to access over 465,000 hotels worldwide and conveniently book the one that best suits their needs. It will also enable them to earn additional Sindbad miles, which can then be exchanged for flights, upgrades, duty free items and a range of other services. Oman Air is committed to going the extra mile giving our guests more opportunities to earn miles and our new partnership with Kaligo shows how we are continually adding to the range of benefits we offer. We are confident that Oman Air’s new partnership with Kaligo will receive a warm welcome from Sindbad members, who will appreciate the additional value and convenience it provides.”

Kyle Armstrong, CEO of Kaligo Travel Solutions said: “We endeavour to offer Sindbad members highly valuable and convenient options to earn points through their hotel bookings. We look forward to collaborating closely with Sindbad to offer its members world class booking experiences.”

Sindbad members can earn up to 10,000 Sindbad miles for each hotel night booked through Kaligo.com. 

Interested?

To celebrate the launch of the partnership, members will earn double Sindbad miles on all hotel bookings made through Kaligo.com till 19 June. This works out to up to 30 Sindbad miles per US$1 spent on every hotel booking.

Avaya identifies gaps in the guest experience

Avaya has announced the findings of its first annual Hospitality Industry Survey, where 72 global hotel brands identified market trends and room for improvement.

Survey respondents aligned around three particular issues as they seek to improve the guest experience: guest engagement, communication and services. Many companies, however, are seeing significant opportunities by taking advantage of mobile, multichannel communications for both guests and staff, and updating standard, in-room devices with cool new applications and capabilities.

Various gaps in the guest experience were identified through the survey:

Engaging guests - more than half (55%) of hospitality companies say they struggle to engage their guests during the booking process, while 70% say they struggle during and after the visit.

Communication between guests and staff leaves a lot to be desired - 60% of survey respondents say the inability of their staff to effectively communicate with guests is a “main factor” diminishing the guest experience at their properties.

Services - six in 10 (62%) of global respondents said the quality of the guest experience at their properties would be significantly improved by enhanced in-room and on-property guest services.

Technology to the rescue

Since most guests are on the move during their stay - as well as a large portion of the staff dedicated to serving them - respondents recognised that mobile apps offer the most compelling opportunity for improving service of any technology (48%). In fact, 81% of respondents are planning to create high-functioning apps over the next five years.

“The guest experience is more important than price when it comes to repeat customers and recommendations. The big question is how do we improve the experience at a reasonable cost, when nearly everything about a hotel has high capital and operating expenses? With Avaya, our hospitality industry customers are finding exciting new ways of engaging guests, creating efficiencies and delight that will help ensure their properties are booked to capacity,” said Frederick Sabty, VP, Hospitality Worldwide for Avaya.

Avaya provides solutions to more than 2,500 hotels worldwide and has existing relationships with nine out of 10 of the world’s luxury hotels.

Sparkle, the virtual concierge uses AI to understand CapitaLand's customers

Sample conversations with Sparklet on the CapitaStar app. The chatbot on the CAPITASTAR app will assist CapitaLand Mall shoppers on frequently asked questions, and even help book a taxi ride to their preferred mall

Powerupcloud Technologies has partnered Microsoft to develop Sparkle, CapitaLand’s virtual concierge, on IRA.AI, its artificial intelligence (AI) platform.

Through Sparkle, a chatbot aimed at transforming the shopper’s journey, CapitaLand customers can hail rides, book restaurants, and browse retailer offerings by simply chatting to Sparkle on the app for CapitaStar, CapitaLand’s rewards programme for its customers.

“In our journey to innovate with new, cutting-edge technologies that help our customers better engage with their stakeholders, we are happy to develop CapitaLand’s Sparkle which is powered by our IRA.AI engine. Sparkle is a milestone for the team as the bot had to pick up over 2,500 nouns unique to CapitaLand, while ensuring its responses to end-users made sense,” said Siva S, Founder and CEO, Powerupcloud Technologies. “We were able to deliver this highly intuitive solution within three months, and we are certain that Sparkle will help CapitaLand in achieving its goal of transforming the retail journey through conversational commerce.”

Sparkle is able to understand shoppers’ queries and respond accordingly via short message exchanges within the CapitaStar app. In addition, Sparkle is designed to decipher localised linguistic cues while understanding and remembering context. The engine also learns automatically through intelligent feedback scoring algorithms, making conversations smarter along the way.

Unlike most scripted chatbots, Sparkle is able to respond accordingly to shoppers’ queries by gaining context even without their inputs within the app. For example, if a shopper was originally looking for fast food outlets in Bedok Mall and later asked a similar question for another CapitaLand mall, Sparkle is able to recognise this switch and respond accordingly without an additional question prompt. This makes the conversation between the shopper and Sparkle closer to interacting with a human.

“CapitaLand was among the first in the retail industry to embrace online-to-offline and offline-to-online (O2O). With the launch of Sparkle, we are leading the way into the next era of consumerism, defined by convergent offline-and-online (O&O) experiences,” said Lim Ming Yan, President & Group CEO, CapitaLand. “This is a first for an Asian real estate developer, and we invite our customers to join us to co-create Sparkle by interacting with it and making it smarter. This way, Sparkle will be a chatbot trained by customers, for customers.”

Today, Sparkle is able to deliver the following information and services to CapitaLand mall shoppers via CapitaStar app through a chat-like service:

• Listing of all CapitaLand malls in Singapore
• Directions to CapitaLand malls
• Queries on stores within the malls
• Book Grab rides to users’ preferred CapitaLand malls
• Make reservations via Chope for any restaurant located in a CapitaLand mall
• View the latest products of retailers such as Charles & Keith and Capitol Optical

“As everything around us becomes more digitised, we are seeing our customers and partners tap on Microsoft’s intelligent cloud platform to deliver innovative solutions that drive digital transformation in every industry. Particularly, we are seeing forward-looking enterprises apply conversations-as-a-platform, a new shift that applies the understanding of human language to computer and computing, to transform the way they are engaging with their customers,” said Jessica Tan, MD, Microsoft Singapore.

“We are very pleased to have the IRA.AI team of Powerupcloud Technologies and CapitaLand choose Azure as the platform for Sparkle, a showcase piece for how the retail industry can leverage intelligent technologies to reimagine engagement with customers, and in turn create new business models and generate revenue.”

Interested?

The refreshed CapitaStar app is now available for download for iOS and Android users

Twitter launches new customer support features for businesses

Source: Twitter. New customer support features.

Twitter is introducing enhanced customer support features to help businesses globally provide even better customer service. Businesses can now indicate that they provide support, and that information now appears in suggestions when people search for a business, mention a business in a Tweet, or find a business in Direct Messages. Additionally, businesses can display hours of availability on their profile to help set people’s expectations for when they are likely to reply.

These businesses’ profiles will also display a more prominent button to start a Direct Message so people know the business offers support privately. Bank Negara Indonesia (BNI) and SMART Philippines are among the first in Southeast Asia to leverage the new support features for better customer service.

The latest enhancements complement previously announced improvements for customer service, including Direct Message links and Customer Feedback cards to help businesses provide better service on Twitter.

“Customer service is an important part of BNI. Being active on Twitter through our @BNI and @BNICustomerCare accounts every day enables us to communicate with our customers, wherever they are. With the Message Button and Support Indicator in our Twitter account profile, it becomes easier for customers to contact us via Direct Message and they will also know when we can respond to their tweets,” said Grace Pong Samma, GM, Marketing Communication Division, BNI.

“Our followers used to go through multiple stages just to reach out to us, but Twitter’s Customer Service has allowed us to streamline our process and consequently increase our engagement with our beloved customers. Over the trial period alone, we saw a 32% increase in direct messages, which allow us to handle the concerns of our customers efficiently and get their feedback so we can continuously improve our service,” said Raymund Rivadelo, VP and Head of Customer Care, SMART Philippines.

Interested?

The features can be activated on a new Customer support settings page on the Twitter Dashboard website. Businesses are required to first enable the setting to receive Direct Messages from anyone. This allows users a choice to communicate about support issues via tweets or Direct Messages, since support issues may require sharing personal information or longer descriptions of issues.

To learn more about how Twitter can help businesses with customer service, businesses can visit Twitter’s Help Center or contact their Twitter account team. Alternatively, they can reach out to one of the Official Partners directly to learn more about getting started with Customer Feedback.

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posted from Bloggeroid

HBMSU launches new diplomas for customer service and institutional excellence

• New 7-Star Customer Service Diploma to make UAE a global example of an excellent provider of government service
• The 4th generation for institutional excellence Diploma supports national efforts to upgrade government system and promote innovation

Hamdan Bin Mohammed Smart University (HBMSU) has launched a 7-Star Customer Service Diploma and a 4th generation for institutional excellence Diploma in line with its commitment to promote the UAE’s leadership in expediting government services and achieving highest customer satisfaction and happiness. The two programmes have received Pearson Assured Status from Pearson.

The 7-Star Customer Service Diploma is designed for customer service representatives, employees, quality and organisational excellence teams of government entities. It complements the Star Rating System launched following the directives of HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, UAE VP and PM and Ruler of Dubai, to raise government service efficiency according to the highest global standards. Part of its role is to help public entities pursue the 4th generation for institutional excellence system, a guide for all UAE government excellence programmes.

The unique programme will enhance the capabilities of local government employees especially in terms of providing ‘7-star services’ as part of the goal of UAE Vision 2021 to catapult the country into the ranks of the world’s most developed nations. It comprises five training modules on the basic rules, methods and trends of modern management, including the best ways to deliver high-quality customer service according to standards as well as effective strategies to harness the power of modern technology to attain improved customer experience, satisfaction and happiness.

The 4th generation for institutional excellence Diploma focuses on main aspects of the 4th generation for institutional excellence system implemented to level up government services as well as instill innovation and highest standard of excellence in public services. The system focuses on three areas: the realisation of the UAE’s vision, innovation and empowerment to attain satisfaction in the use of government services, as well as continuous learning and development.

Dr Mansoor Al Awar, HBMSU Chancellor, said: “The new programmes reflect the university’s commitment to the UAE’s march towards national prosperity driven by excellence. We also support the country’s pioneering efforts to become the world’s first government to establish approved benchmarks for public services.

“HBMSU provides continuous learning and professional development in various influential areas of leadership, government excellence, entrepreneurship and change management, among others, to help our learners succeed. The two new programmes, the latest affirmation of this commitment, are being offered under the guidance of HH Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and President of HBMSU, in our bid to reshape the future of teaching and learning by using innovative methods. These advanced tools support the country’s aspirations to produce a generation capable of leading the emirates into a future where the country sets the bar high in terms of delivery of government services and government excellence."

The programmes support smart education initiatives that include three phases, namely the ‘awareness’ stage based on self-learning; the ‘application’ stage featuring hands-on training; and the ‘follow-up’ stage in which support and guidance using virtual tools are given to sustain the gains. During the three stages, the learners have an opportunity to study the training materials under the supervision of an elite group of experts and trainers as well as communicate with their fellow learners in an interactive environment where exchange, transfer and enrichment of knowledge are ensured.

The 7-Star Customer Service Diploma programme consists of five modules, namely Introduction to Customer Service, Professionalism and Excellence in Identifying and Dealing with Customers, Call Center Management, Time Management and Government Services Strategies, as well as The 4th generation for institutional excellence System and 7-Star Service Program. The sessions for the 7-Star Customer Service Diploma will run for 19 days, six hours per day. It includes one day for a graduation project. The training starts in November of this year.

The 4th generation for institutional excellence Diploma is based on nine tracks, the National Agenda and Achievement of UAE Vision and Results-Orientation, Smart Government and Management of Services, Cities and Smart Communities, Looking to the Future and Sustainable Competitiveness, Innovation Management and Achieving Leadership, Major tasks (design, implementation and operations), Seven-Star Services and Management of the Service Centers, Human Capital Management, Properties and Resources Management, and Corporate Governance. The course will be 28 days long, six hours a day, including one day for a graduation project. global startup space. The MOSTI Commercialisation Year conference will run parallel to the GEC. The Global Startup Award ceremony will be held on 3 November.

Akamai's secrets to e-commerce success

Running a successful e-commerce business can be challenging when half of all shoppers expect websites to load in less than two seconds or they won’t return, Akamai warns. The company has created an infographic with two fundamental ways online retailers can boost their e-commerce businesses, by understanding the customer today, and by delivering "faster, smarter and safer". 

E-commerce behaviour is trending towards mobile devices, for example. According to the infographic, mobile and tablet shoppers shop 20% more frequently than desktop shoppers, and spend US$500 more over the same period, pointing to mobile support as increasingly important.

More crucially, there is now a "two-second" rule. Besides abandoning a site if it takes more than two seconds to load, 20% of customers never return to a slow or crashing site, and will complain about it very visibly in social media.  "Compare and optimise response time across websites to cater for different platforms such as Android vs iPhone," Akamai further suggests.

Interested?

Read the WorkSmart Asia blog posts about Akamai's tips on app engagement and MasterCard's research on mobile shopping in Asia Pacific

Zain customers receive extra rewards when reserving through Booking.com

- Service now available in Zain operations in Kuwait and Iraq, other countries to follow soon

- Reservations made through a dedicated Zain link are converted to additional complimentary mobile services

Source: Zain Group. Zain to offer rewards for Booking.com orders.

The Zain Group, a mobile telecom innovator with operations in eight markets across the Middle East and Africa, has partnered with hotel reservation booking services site Booking.com to offer Zain customers additional complimentary mobile services for using the hotel service through a dedicated link. Zain has previously partnered global technology and content companies such as Uber and global computer game developer ZeptoLab to customers.

Zain customers who book a hotel stay through booking.zain.com will gain exclusive benefits based on the value of their booking. By inserting their phone number, each time they complete a booking on the site and fulfil the reservation, they will be rewarded with the allocation of additional mobile data or voice benefits that are credited to either their prepaid or post-paid line.

In Kuwait, customers will receive additional free Internet capacity of up to 1TB, while in Iraq, customers will benefit from additional voice and SMS credits. Other Zain country operations will offer similar benefits according to the local market preferences.

Zain Group CEO Scott Gegenheimer said, “As we evolve to become a digital lifestyle operator, this agreement with another world class digital marketplace provider represents Zain’s ongoing commitment to delivering exciting and compelling user experiences to our customers. We admire Booking.com’s customer orientation in its own right, and feel that the collaboration between our two organizations will be of enormous mutual benefit offering our customers the best choice of rewards and convenience.”

The partnership with Booking.com further builds on the establishment of the Zain Digital Frontier and Innovation (ZDFI) business unit, which is charged with launching Zain into the digital space by identifying new business areas, strategic partnerships, acquisition opportunities and other investments. Collectively, these activities look to create new revenue streams to maximise the group’s high-speed 4G-LTE broadband networks, customer assets, network intelligence and payment and billing frameworks.

Booking.com is available in more than 40 languages, and offers over 900,000 active properties in 223 countries and territories. The site offers competitive hotel rates and an easy way for travellers to choose and book accommodation.

Interested?

The service is now available to Zain customers in Kuwait and Iraq. It will be rolled out to other Zain country operations in due course.

Using Tableau visualisations in real-time to start a conversation

Murphy shows how 'before Tableau' contrasts with 'after Tableau'. He discovered Tableau in 2010.

In a presentation called Don't Fear the Data, Google's Head of TV Attribution (APAC), David Murphy says that large datasets are easy to work with if you have the right tools. Speaking at the Tableau on Tour conference in Singapore, Murphy said that his life can easily be divided into 'Before Tableau' and 'After Tableau'.

Before he discovered Tableau's visualisation software, he used spreadsheets to create charts, and did not look forward to making changes as it was complex and time-consuming even to make minor changes to the chart. If different versions of the chart had to be made for different teams, a change meant updating all the different versions, with the risk of human error occurring along the way.

The software was also slow, and tended to break down, he added. Questions had to be predetermined. "You need to know what you need to pull out from the data before you can do something with it," Murphy explained.

"It turns people off big data - you come up with lots of reasons why you won't do it rather than saying 'let's do it'," he said.

The Tableau epiphany for Murphy occurred in 2010, he said. He found that he could create charts "twice as fast, or better". "It freed me up to do more cool things, there was more time for me to analyse and bring insights, rather than being a data monkey and doing manual tasks," he said. "I solved problems more easily. (Tableau) greatly reduced the concept-to-implementation gap."

With Tableau, there was no need to worry about breaking equations and cell references, as can happen in spreadsheet software, he said. "There is no need to lock in design. You can rapidly iterate, get more responsive to the needs of the business and to the needs of the users...get much faster insights," he said.

Instead of having a customer or manager ask a question and returning in a week with the charts that answered the question, Tableau allows real-time changes to the data, maintaining the momentum there and then. "I can have a conversation with the data there and then, with the stakeholders who want to know," he said.

Instead of predetermined questions, Tableau has freed Murphy to play around with the data at his disposal, he added. "If you think it, you can do it," he said, with trivial questions potentially leading to something useful.
   

Using Tableau for data visualisation has replaced spreadsheets.

At Google, Murphy uses Tableau to show the relationships between broadcast advertisement airings and online engagement. "Previously you would have had to (show the customer) a .csv file with 12 dimensions and eight measures," he said.

He noted that while each customer's needs are unique, he can now address them in real-time. "You can be really responsive. You don't have to know everything before you go in; you can learn together with customers," he said. "It shows that we care and we keep to the heart of things which I couldn't really do with spreadsheet solutions, and (that) would have taken months to do."

Murphy has also set up a personal site, Datasaurus-Rex, which features visualisations created with Tableau. Among his projects are a dog year calculator, connecting dengue fever cases with mosquito breeding habitats, through crowdsourced insights. "It makes things accessible to people," he said. "I can dive into unknown datasets with ease, and empower others to understand data."

Interested?

Check out Murphy's visualisations on the Datasaurus-Rex site
View visualisations made with Tableau Public
Get a free trial of Tableau

Read the TechTrade Asia blog posts on building a Smart Nation and why visualisations matter

Hashtags: #data16, #datasaurusrex

Security breaches have serious repercussions for customer loyalty

Source: Gemalto infographic. Consumers are willing to take legal action against companies which suffer security breaches of consumer data.

Nearly two-thirds (64%) of consumers worldwide say they are unlikely to shop or do business again with a company that had experienced a breach where financial information was stole​n, and almost half (49%) had the same opinion when it came to data breaches where personal information was stolen. This is according to a recent global survey* by Gemalto. a digital security provider, titled Broken Trust: 'Tis the Season to Be Wary, which surveyed 5,750 consumers in Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, Japan, the UK and the US.

Six in 10 people surveyed (59%) believe that threats to their personal information increases during the festive season, while two in 10 (18%) believe that they are likely to be a victim of a breach during the holiday season.

A quarter of all respondents feel that companies take the protection and security of customer data very seriously. More than twice as many respondents feel that the responsibility of protecting and securing customer data falls on the company (69%) versus the customer (31%). Of the employed respondents, only around two fifths (38%) feel that their employer takes the protection and security of employee data very seriously.

The survey revealed that 31% of respondents have already been affected by data breach in the past. Around four in 10 state the most likely causes for being a victim of a breach are visiting a fraudulent website (42%), phishing attacks (40%) or clicking a fraudulent web link (37%). The emotional impact of data breaches has also created apprehensive feelings towards businesses with nearly one fifth surveyed (19%) feeling they are likely to be a victim of one within twelve months to three years.

Ninety percent of surveyed consumers feel that there are apps and websites that pose significant risks to the protection and security of their personal information. Fifty-five percent believe that social media sites expose them to the greatest risk, and around two in five respondents believe adult content and torrent apps/websites carry the greatest risk to the security of personal information.

Around a quarter (23%) of respondents who have been a victim of a data breach, either have, or would, consider taking legal action against the breached company involved in exposing their personal information. Almost half (49%) of respondents said they would take or would consider taking legal action against any of the parties involved in exposing their personal information.

However, the consumer may also be at fault. The survey also found that more than half (54%) of respondents are using the same password for all or some of their online accounts. Of the respondents who actively use social media accounts, only a quarter (25%) use two-factor authentication to secure all of their social media accounts.

Of the respondents who actively use online/mobile banking, around six in 10 (58%) say that all of their banks use two-factor authentication to secure their Internet banking. This is not as widespread amongst retailers, however. Of the respondents who actively use online retail accounts, just a quarter state that all of the online retail apps/websites they use require two-factor authentication to secure online transactions.

"The media coverage of massive data breaches has done little to instil consumers' confidence in how well companies, big and small, are protecting their data," said Jason Hart, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for Data Protection at Gemalto. "The fact that employees don't even feel that their employers are taking the protection of their personal data security very seriously rings alarm bells. Either companies need to increase their security measures or, assuming that they already have these in place, they need to communicate this to their customers."

Source: Gemalto infographic. The websites which pose the greatest threat to customer data theft.

"As companies collect ever-increasing amounts of customer data and as our digital interactions become more diverse, more data about what we do, who we are and what we like is being stored online," continued Hart. "The survey proves that the traditional data security mindset needs to evolve, this goes for companies and consumer adoption of advanced security measures like two-factor authentication. Otherwise, an increasing numbers of consumers will cut ties with companies who aren't taking data protection seriously, and take their business to someone they can trust."

Interested?

Read the Customer Loy​alty and Data Breach Report
View the complete infographic​​

*Independent technology market research specialist Vanson Bourne was commissioned by Gemalto to undertake the research, for which 5,750 consumers were interviewed during October and November 2015. Seven hundred and fifty interviews were conducted in each of the following countries: UK, Australia, Japan, France and Germany, and 1,500 interviews in the US, plus 500 in Brazil. To qualify for the study, consumers had to actively use online/mobile banking, social media accounts or online retail accounts.​​

Plantronics takes design very seriously

The words sent back in 1969 from the moon came via Plantronics equipment, and the company has not stopped its commitment to innovation ever since. The company is working on devices that deliver contextual intelligence, a combination of hardware, sensors, and software, said Alvin Kiew, Director of Sales & Marketing for Plantronics South-East Asia.

Examples of such contextual intelligence include knowing that a headset has been taken off, and routing an active call to the phone, or pausing the music that is playing, Kiew said.

Plantronics found that its customers can be divided into different categories with different needs at work. 

The customer profiles are very detailed, and headsets are designed to address the challenges experienced by different customer profiles.

Plantronics is also focused on understanding their customers in order to give them what they want. Some of the headset features that cater to always-connected professionals include long battery lives of up to 18 hours a day, battery life indicators, and compatibility with inflight entertainment systems.

When it comes to gamers, customisability is key, said Kiew. Plantronics' RIG corded headsets for gaming are modular and can be modified for ordinary use. In line with the company's contextual intelligence stance, RIG 500 headsets will automatically mute the mike the moment it is lifted.

Christopher Thompson, VP of Enterprise Marketing, Plantronics, said the Voyager Focus UC family is about helping business users to focus, hence the name. The company found that changes in workstyle have changed the work environment significantly, requiring different tools to create a professional experience. "Work is something you do, it's not a place you go," he said.

For 20-somethings just beginning their careers, high quality audio and device compatibility are important, Thompson noted. "We wanted to give them a tool that works with other things that they have... and addresses the activity of the environment that they live in," he said.

Plantronics Voyager Focus UC headsets provide a different experience from standard earbuds bundled with phones, for example. While earbuds typically transmit ambient sounds in the environment, making a conference call noisy for others, Plantronics Voyager Focus UC headsets are designed with three types of noise cancellation technology, Thompson said: passive noise cancellation, which damps down sudden noises; active cancellation, where mikes placed at the outside of the headset capture and then block outside noise, and a noise-cancelling mike that prevents the transmission of the conversation beyond the headset.

Thompson pointing out that today's work environment has evolved from quiet office cubicles to noisier environments. 

The headstrap, below the usual headband, brings the cushions of the earcups closer to the ear for a better audio experience, with more effective noise cancellation. At the same time, weight is redistributed from the head to the head and the earcups. Thompson said that customer feedback has been that headsets with headstraps feel lighter as a result.

Contextual intelligence features for the Voyager Focus UC include no dedicated 'left' and 'right' controls. No matter which way the wearer has put the headset on, features will work the way he or she expects. Turning the mike 'down' or the volume control 'forward' will always have the same effect, Thompson said.

Read the WorkSmart Asia blog post on the Plantronics Voyager Focus UC headsets

posted from Bloggeroid

The companies which really need to invest in security to stay in business

Organisations should prioritise security above all else or be prepared to struggle to stay afloat if a security breach exposes customer data, warns security firm Trend Micro. The company mentioned the recent Ashley Madison dating website hack as one case where individuals, especially married ones, might be expected to be unhappy to be outed as customers.

"It's about protecting private, personal details and a reputation. When personal details of this nature become public, this opens up the breach victims to blackmail and extortion—at the very least, they could expect situations that involve Internet shaming and awkward explanations," the company noted in a statement.

According to Trend Micro, there are many other companies which need to focus on security to the nature of their business: 

Online retailers such as Lazada, Zalora, Taobao, or basically any company which sells anything online

"Customers want to have the ease of being able to shop online without being at risk of having their personal details exposed and stolen. With multiple transactions involving credit card details and banking information, it’s a gold mine for cyber attackers," the company said.

Cloud storage and sharing services - DropBox, iCloud 

Anything gets saved on these services, including confidential data. "Ensuring server security and providing secure processes such as two factor authentication reduces the risk and increases security for data storage. Similarly, let’s not forget that users also have to play their part in being savvy on having hard-to-guess passwords and so on," Trend Micro commented.

Messaging services - Line, WhatsApp, WeChat, and email services - Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook.com 

Eavesdropper alert - what if private conversations were made public? While messaging services need only worry about hackers stealing conversations or customer information, breaching email is the jackpot. Besides being a source of confidential data and conversations, email is often a method of authentication, and a common way of getting phished. Trend Micro’s 2014 Roundup Report Magnified Losses, Amplified Need for Cyber-Attack Preparedness showed an 88.65% increase in the volume of phishing sites in 2014, so the danger is worse than ever before.

"It’s on both the business and the user to provide and understand security measures that should be taken. Being cautious to targeted attacks such as phishing scams is one example," Trend Micro said. 

"Companies that hold the personal data of their users need to go above and beyond what regulations call for, to reassure their users that they are doing all they can to protect their users."

Singapore retailer uses Qlik, Deloitte Digital solution to track customer's stories over time

Inverted Edge, a Singapore-based online retailer, is using its retail space at Scotts Square mall to provide customers with a personalised interactive digital shopping experience with the help of Qlik, a visual analytics provider, and Deloitte Digital, a design and development agency. 

Source: Inverted Edge website.

Apart from housing quality contemporary luxury apparel, the in-store solution includes a continually changing showcase of photos and stories from customers, shared on social media, about the clothes they wear and their related stories. As a wearer adds a new garment or story, it will appear on the visual display, inspiring others and adding to the excitement of discovering and sharing new looks, bridging fashion and everyday life from posts shared across social media platforms.

“At Inverted Edge we are proponents of Fashion that Matters, or sometimes we call it Slow Fashion. We believe that when you buy something you love, you should wear it and wear it in multiple places and in different ways and across multiple seasons. It’s not disposable, it doesn’t get thrown out after two months; it becomes something that has meaning,” said Debra Langley, Chief Executive Officer at Inverted Edge.

“As a garment is worn as part of a lifestyle, it takes on a life and emotional quotient all of its own, developing a story between the wearer and the items purchased. We want to develop something that captures these relationships, and from a business standpoint, understand what fuels our shopper’s purchasing decisions.”

Built mainly on Qlik's Sense platform, Inverted Edge’s in-store digital solution delivers an interactive and personalised digital experience for customers. The framework allows Inverted Edge to manage and study purchasing data to identify key factors that drive customers’ decisions to purchase high quality items that are designed to be worn for more than a couple of seasons. This enables the company to discover what it is their customers are looking out for, and tailor their services to customer needs.

Added Donald Farmer, Qlik’s US-based Vice President of Innovation and Design: “By transforming dry material such as purchasing data and customer analytics into engaging, informative digital stories and conversations, Qlik is providing Inverted Edge with the ability to tackle real and significant problems that fashion retailers face in brand new ways. In particular, we are enabling them to design fresh means of engaging with the stories we tell about ourselves, and the clothes we wear and aspire to own. It’s a fascinating approach, and a perfect partnership for Qlik.”

The digital experience will later be replicated at Manifesto, Inverted Edge e-commerce partner’s new concept store carrying international contemporary brands in Singapore’s Capitol Piazza development. Focusing on integrating both online and offline initiatives, the two retailers are aligned on their desire to create a new and different retail shopper experience over the next six months.

Interested?

Inverted Edge is at #01-11 Scotts Square
Manifesto is at #02-19, Capitol Piazza

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.

posted from Bloggeroid

StarHub revamps loyalty programme so customers can redeem more

Singapore's StarHub has unveiled a revamped customer incentive programme to enable customers to earn and redeem points sooner.

StarHub is partnering e-merchants to allow customers to earn StarHub Rewards Points while shopping online. Agoda, a hotel booking site, was the first merchant to partner StarHub. Shopback—a Singapore-based startup that connects consumers to e-tailers such as ASOS, Groupon, Lazada and Zalora is also on board.

Every dollar spent at Agoda via starhub.com/agoda will earn one StarHub Rewards Point for StarHub customers. Customers who shop at Shopback via starhub.com/shopback may earn one or more StarHub Rewards Points. StarHub will also be partnering merchants for one-off promotions. Those who book a hotel from Agoda for June will earn three times the number of StarHub Rewards Points.

The Points can then be used to redeem StarHub Rewards across its Eat, Shop and Play catalogues, which include over 50 merchants and brands.

As part of StarHub’s SG50 promotions, customers can also look forward to redeeming over 5,000 items for 50 StarHub Rewards Points across a span of five weeks from early July.

“At StarHub, we value the loyalty and support of our customers. That is why we enhanced our loyalty programme around their needs; to reward them with what is relevant to them. We recognise that, increasingly, consumers are shopping online, hence, our partnerships with Agoda and Shopback will enable customers to be rewarded whenever they shop online with our partners,” said Jeannie Ong, Chief Marketing Officer, StarHub.

“Through these partnerships, customers will be able to earn StarHub Rewards Points faster and redeem for rewards they want across a richer variety of options. We are constantly on the lookout to bring the latest trends and offerings to our customers, and will continue to introduce more partners and exciting rewards options in the near future.”

Interested?

Find out more about the loyalty programme
Existing customers can redeem rewards (login required)

StarHub launches SmartUC service for Singapore businesses, powered by Avaya

Avaya, a customer and team engagement solutions provider, and StarHub, an integrated infocommunications company in Singapore, have launched a business communications service, SmartUC, for businesses in Singapore. 

The benefits are fourfold: SmartUC can help businesses become more productive, deliver a first class experience for their customers, differentiate their products and services, and expand.

“The expectations of business users and customers have rapidly evolved in recent years, and that change will only accelerate. We now expect mobility and apps and social and cloud. We expect video and chat and flexibility and ease of use. We expect the world at our click,” observed Pamela Tham, Singapore Country Leader, Avaya.

Providing a suite of unified communications capabilities, SmartUC will be delivered in two different offerings – a Standard option for small businesses with fewer than 50 users, and a Premium option for companies with over 50 users, allowing for seamless business growth and flexibility. The SmartUC Premium option includes all the capabilities of the Standard version, plus support for Android, IOS, Windows and Mac devices, contact centre self-service and multimedia capabilities.

"With SmartUC, we bring about a cost-effective value proposition to help Singapore companies to operate more efficiently, while maintaining the fine balance to scale and grow more competitively. Through this innovative approach, we aim to partner our enterprise customers to deliver outstanding service to their businesses,” said Sebastian Tan, Vice President, Enterprise Solutions, Services and Delivery, StarHub.

For small and midsize businesses (SMBs) in particular, a cost effective and high-performance technology solution can help to deliver quicker decision making and better business results. The SmartUC solution ticks all the boxes to help Singapore businesses grow and deliver exceptional service:

· Simple to use and easy to tailor; can be deploy with managed service support

· Monthly subscription offering without the hefty upfront IT expenses or costly feature upgrades associated with traditional corporate phone systems

· Supports a handful of users all the way to 2,500 users

· Integrates easily with existing solutions

· Can work at the workplace, or in the cloud 

SmartUC is based on the Avaya IP Office platform, a solution for SMBs with over 480,000 midmarket systems installed around the world. IP Office helps connect businesses with their customers using the methods those customers prefer - including voice, SMS, web chat, video, email, or fax. IP Office also helps people work from anywhere.

Mango Routes uses Ameyo to manage customer campaigns

Source: Mango Routes website.

Mango Routes, a Gurgaon-based travel service company, has implemented technology from Ameyo for customer engagement.

As a startup, Mango Routes needed call technology that provided a better customer experience. The solution had to integrate seamlessly with its customer relationship management system while ensuring best-in-class customer support, first call resolution* (FCR) and streamlined communication processes. 

"As a complete travel services company that offers its services to businesses and retail customers alike, taking care of their end-to-end travel requirements, we needed a communication platform that could enable us to provide hassle free services. We chose Ameyo over other vendors because of its one stop solution, technological advancement and its solution oriented approach. 

"Our entire calling setup is built on (Ameyo) and it works as a heart for our system. Within months of deployment, we were able to see better management in our outbound campaigns. We believe that Ameyo will help us in understanding our customers well in the long run," said Amit Nautiyal, Travel Expert and Contracting Head, Mango Routes India.

*FCR refers to resolving the customer's request without requiring further calls.