The Internet is empowering the customer, says Genesys Although product quality remains top of mind when people are looking to buy, customer service comes a close second, and is likely to increase in importance because of the ubiquity of the Internet, says Genesys CEO Paul Segre.

Genesys is a provider of contact centre solutions to about 4 000 customers in 80 countries. Although customers operate in various sectors, the group`s top three verticals, in terms of contribution to its business, are financial services, telcos and government.

Segre says the reason that the focus on customer service will accelerate, and that companies that "don`t get it will be in serious trouble", is because the Internet has shifted the balance of power.

IT ALL STARTS ON THE WEB

"People start their research for any major product or service on the Web. They don`t always buy on the Web, but people start on the Web, and the Web has changed the balance of power between the consumer and an enterprise. It used to be that an enterprise knew a lot more about its customers than customers necessarily knew about the product. And they were able, through marketing and advertising, to control the communication to their customers."

That has changed with the spread of the Internet. And people are not using only search engines such as Google to research customer service, he says. "Even better is doing this on YouTube. Choose your favourite company, go to YouTube and type in its name and you`ll find these hilarious videos on customer service."

MYTH BUSTING

Segre said on a recent visit to the country that it was a myth that there existed a trade-off between cost, customer service, and the ability to generate revenue through cross-selling or up-selling in the enterprise`s contact centre.

"What we`ve been doing is trying to evangelise, for the past several years, this message," Segre says. "And this year we`ve really been focusing on it and we`ve had a lot of success." However, he says there are still many companies throughout the world that do not embrace the reality. "And they either need to embrace it, or their competition will and they`ll be left behind."

Segre says there has been some scepticism about whether South African enterprises truly care about customer service. Part of the reason for his visit to the country was to present, in a series of meetings co-hosted with local partner Intelleca, the case for customer service using case studies and research data.

He points to an Accenture study that shows that customer loyalty increases only when there is "customer delight". A study by Genesys revealed that respondents saw customer service as being an important factor in their business decisions.

"We asked end-customers which of these categories did they feel was most important as far as making a choice about whether to do business with a company," he says. While 43% of respondents said product quality was most important, 38% said service was the top criterion. This was followed by price (15%) and brand (4%).

SERVICE CATCHES UP

"What we can see is that product is still the biggest, but service is coming very close. There are lots of explanations for this, but my belief is that product certainly needs to be good enough - when product is highly differentiated, people buy on product," Segre says. "But once it`s good enough and it`s not so differentiated, then the battleground for loyalty shifts to service.

"In financial services, how differentiated are banks? Now they try really hard to have differentiation, but the reality is they are not really that differentiated. How differentiated are telcos? They try really hard, but once they lose their monopoly they`re not that differentiated. So they can`t compete on product - they have to compete on service," he says.

"We might not be seeing it translated into facts on the ground yet in SA, but I do believe - and we see it every day - that there is great progress on customer service."