Last week Fifth Quadrant released the 2012 Australia & New Zealand Customer Service Industry Technology Report. In contrast to my beloved boss Dr Wallace, this is my favourite report, and next week my second favourite report will be released, Performance Management.

I wanted to pull out a couple of key stats relating to customer service and technology......

The top five planned technology investment areas (including purchases, upgrades and replacements) for contact centres in Australia for the next 12 months are:

1. Automatic Call Distributor (ACD) (35%)
2. Interactive Voice Response (IVR) (34%)
3. Virtual Hold / Automated Call Back (33%)
4. Voice & data recording & quality monitoring tools (29%)
5. Workforce Management tools (29%).

In relation to technology, the top three challenges faced by contact centres in Australia in the last 12 months were:

1. Stability of systems (38%)
2. Technology lacking functionality (36%)
3. Budget restrictions on technology spend (28%).

The top three technology strategies for contact centres in Australia for the next 12 months are:

1. Implement new technology (27%)
2. Review future technology requirements (23%)
3. Upgrading existing technology (16%).

Personal highlight.....it is great to see virtual hold and automatic call back as a top three investment area. Our data shows that consumers love this technology. Who really wants to wait on hold anymore?

If you are interested in ordering this report please drop an email to Jules at jtrajkovski@fifthquadrant.com.au.