What Can Good (and Bad) Service do for Customer Loyalty in Asia Pacific?

Every business claims to put their customers first – but Genesys’ latest research suggests that 3 in every 4 consumers in Asia Pacific have ended up crying or cursing because of bad customer service. The costs to Asian enterprise could be even greater than they might expect: nearly 50% of consumers in APAC will cease doing business with a company if it delivers a poor customer experience. While there is no “one size fits all” approach to strong customer experience design, business leaders in Asia Pacific should consider these unexpected insights as their customer experiences – and customers themselves – continue to evolve.

How effective are your interactions?

Not all customer experience channels work the same way. In fact, Genesys’ latest research suggests that newer channels, like video and social media, often fail to meet the actual needs of consumers seeking to engage with brands in the region. That should prompt brands to reconsider where they invest their customer experience budgets and how they design their digital channels for greater effectiveness, based on feedback from customers as well as broader market insights. Genesys’ research suggests, for example, that video and social media channels struggle to achieve a sufficiently personal level of customer service, even with younger consumers accustomed to such forms of communication.

To Bot or Not to Bot?

The same lessons apply to the next big focal point of customer experience strategy: chatbots and automation. Despite the rising popularity of chatbots at the front-line of customer service, our research suggests that nearly 1 in every 2 consumers in Asia will rather wait 10 minutes on hold to speak to a human, rather than interact with a chatbot. In many cases, customers simply don’t feel confident that a bot can effectively understand and respond to their issues, particularly when they encounter automated responses that struggle to address the nuances of the issue. Asian brands should be considerate in how they use bots, supporting them with easy access to human operators, to avoid creating “bot fatigue” amongst customers that could undermine more effective uses of the technology in the future.

Good CX is the “new normal”

Most consumers are no longer willing to trade off a good customer experience for cheaper prices. In fact, efficient and responsive customer experiences are now the norm, at any price point: more than 70% of all consumers in the region would still stop engaging with brands that provide a subpar customer experience, even if they were getting cheaper prices or had few other competitive options to choose from. On the other hand, only a small percentage of customers will remain loyal to a business after a bad customer experience incident – implying that once-durable customer loyalty hangs on a far thinner thread than most businesses may realise.

Serve with Excellence

Ultimately, when customers are considering to purchase from a business, research shows that 86% of all consumers in Asia base their decision on the business’ reputation for customer service. That makes each customer interaction a window of opportunity for companies to build their brand and amplify its reach to an even greater audience. It also means brands can’t afford to let any poor customer experience go unanswered. In the event of a bad customer experience incident, it’s crucial for businesses to be open in receiving feedback from customers, and take visible and tangible steps to ensure the issues won’t occur again in the future.

Based on the research findings, businesses in Asia Pacific should take a personalised approach to their customer service strategy, considering how digital channels can be blended with a human element to increase efficiency while maintaining a good customer experience.

To find out what attributes can boost your company’s CX strategy, and how to cultivate them for an increasingly demanding customer base, download the full Asia Pacific insights paper.