M

any Indonesian companies remain unaware of the need to provide more convenient and technologically integrated customer services, a new survey has suggested.

A recent survey of customer service insight conducted by global multichannel communications solutions company Avaya revealed that 58 percent of consumers in Indonesia still found dealing with companies'€™ customer services exhausting.

Only one in six people from 500 Indonesian consumers surveyed was satisfied with the companies'€™ current customer service.

'€œThere'€™s a challenge in Indonesia to do with what the consumer requires and what the companies can provide. Many organizations are not providing the kind of contact the consumers choose to have,'€ Avaya director of Asia Pacific solutions marketing Paul Anderson said in a press briefing on Thursday.

Indonesian consumers were becoming more autonomous, Paul said, meaning that they actively looked for information from the Internet and those around them given the rapid development in technology.

This requires companies to provide technology that caters to customers'€™ wants and needs.

At least 91 percent of consumers surveyed said they wanted companies to be easier to access by phone, webchat or email. Video chat and mobile applications were also commonly mentioned as preferred media of communication.
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'€œIndonesia is a very gadget-centric, digitalized society. There is a big potential market there, but companies are just not aware.'€

However, with various channels used, consumers still expect to be able to move from one channel to another easily and still be recognized as one person, as currently, companies tend to ask repeatedly for the same details.

'€œThey want the customer service agent to be instantly familiar with their contact history,'€ Paul added.

Indonesian consumers, avid social media users with 62 million people active on various social media this year according to the Communications and Information Ministry, also demanded stronger corporate social media engagement, the survey showed.

Around 80 percent of consumers stated that they would contact companies'€™ Facebook pages, and 57 percent expected a response to their comments within 15 minutes.

'€œIndonesia is a very gadget-centric, digitalized society. There is a big potential market there, but the companies are just not aware,'€ Avaya Indonesia country manager Endang Rachmawati said.

She added that the companies would also glean useful information about consumer behavior from social media, especially regarding the younger generation.

Avaya also warned that 41 percent of consumers in Indonesia posted their complaints on their social media accounts and would ask their friends to share the posts, despite strict online libel laws.

The survey also revealed that ease of contacting companies was key to consumer decisions to buy from companies, with 79 percent of Indonesian consumers surveyed preferring to buy from companies that are easier to access.

'€œLook at Go-Jek,'€ Endang said, referring to the increasingly popular app-based motorcycle taxi (ojek) service, which negates the hassle of negotiating prices with traditional ojek drivers by allowing customers to order rides through the app.

Endang said that big companies in Indonesia had started to build more integrated channels to engage with consumers, although many more still clung to traditional customer services.

'€œTraditional customer services are no longer enough. People prefer companies that are easier to do business with,'€ she said. (fsu)