Prepared by Forrester Consulting, the study titled “Redefining Human and Automated Engagement – How APAC Consumers Have Impacted The CX Agenda” aims to understand the evolution of engagement between humans and machines. The study looks at whether digital transformation has given rise to self-service and automated support or are customers still expecting real-time personalised services and interactions from customer service people.
In Malaysia, there is still a habitual reliance on live human support and Malaysians prefer to communicate with live human agents either through online live chats (45%), via social media (45%) or over the phone (43%).
Comparatively, Indonesia and Thailand posted a higher score at 4.1 and 4.2 respectively, while Singapore lagged at 3.7 This study involved 1,210 participants across China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, Taiwan, and Vietnam.
The study examined customers’ preferred touchpoints, preferred mode of engagement, and their interaction with brands. It identified Malaysians under the ‘affluent hybrid-shoppers’ persona whereby consumers are comfortable switching between digital and human touchpoints.
The study indicated a rather balanced preference by Malaysians when it comes to receiving customer support from brands, posing an opportunity for brands to better strategise their play of a hybrid CX experience to meet the needs of customers today.
Infobip Malaysia’s business development director, Guray Ozturk pointed out that Malaysians prefer a balanced form of engagement with brands when it comes to service support, be it through automated service or speaking to a live human agent.
“Although WhatsApp is the most-used social media platform by 93.2% Malaysians, our whitepaper released last year found that only 55% of companies use Facebook-owned WhatsApp Business to manage customer support, while 46% of respondents cited that there is not enough digital support by companies to effectively utilise available digital platforms,” said Ozturk.
“This indicates that brands will need to assess, re-evaluate, and deploy a hybrid omnichannel CX solution capable of engaging customers anytime, anywhere.”
He believes this will also be a key driver to their revenue growth in the long run.