I am so delighted to have launched this week Fifth Quadrant's Customer Service Industry Analyst Practice. After 15 years of focusing keenly on the contact centre industries across all major markets in Asia Pacific we have now extended our Analyst program to include all customer service channels in all key industry verticals. Most importantly all our research reports will include primary consumer data, primary organisational data, case studies and vendor analysis.

The very first report we are releasing under this new Practice, on Monday 12 March, is an Australia & New Zealand Customer Self-Service Market Report. Some of the key findings of this report are set out below.

The definition of Self-Service is: A method of contact that allows consumers to interact with an organisation and resolve their enquiry(ies), entirely, without any human interaction.

Currently the primary channels that customers in Australia and New Zealand may self-serve through include:

1. Web interface (online information, forms, applications, other)
2. Interactive Voice Response (IVR)
3. Speech Recognition
4. Automated Web Chat
5. Automated Email
6. Automated SMS
7. Automate social media
8. Automated kiosks or vending machines
9. Smartphone applications

In Australia, organisations handle 27 million customer service interactions per day across all channels including voice, face-to-face, online, correspondence, social media and smartphone apps.

Of the total customer interactions handled by an organisation, over just over 20million customer interactions per day are handled through the contact centre channel.

This number of customer interactions handled through the contact centre has not significantly increased year on year, however the number of interactions handled through non-voice channels has.

That being said use of pure self-service channels remains relatively low, with only 6% of customer interactions handled through these channels.

So interesting.

Please click here if you would like to pre-order the report

On another note - this week we have launched a not-for-profit Fund called, Kids In Philanthropy (KIP), which is a sub-fund of The Sydney Community Foundation. The KIP fund focuses on building social awareness, social conscience and a practice of giving, in the kids of Sydney for the kids of Sydney. It aims to raise awareness in children, from more advantaged backgrounds, to the significant need in disadvantaged Sydney communities. The ultimate aim is to bridge the increasing divide between the children who 'have' and who 'have not' and create opportunities for knowledge sharing, friendship, a spirit of sharing and cultural exchange amongst families.

Please see our philanthropy page for more information. Would love to hear from those of you who are interested in being involved.