Customer care is emerging as a key IT investment area for CIOs in the current downturn, according to the findings of a new IDC poll.
While most organisations are reducing or freezing their investments in IT, 23 percent of the Australian-based respondees indicate they will still invest in IT solutions that can help them increase earnings or save costs.
Chief among these areas is customer care, which nearly half of the respondents saw as a way to generate revenue, with many ready to progress beyond traditional customer relationship management, IDC says.
About nine out of 10 respondees also said they had increased their focus on the customer because of the economic downturn.
"Australian companies see customer care as essential to growing top line revenue and not just keeping customers happy to achieve their growth strategies despite the downturn," Linus Lai, associate research director at IDC Australia, said of the results.
"New advanced customer care tools, such as customer analytics, customer database management and new web-based tools, are much more on the agenda for these types of companies. They tend to appreciate the value of customer targeting and engagement more than companies with a more reactive approach.”
The poll also found that despite the impact of the economic downturn, the top business priority of more than half the companies surveyed was to increase earnings over cost control.
The results of the poll were released ahead of IDC’s Advanced Customer Care and Retention conference, to be held in Sydney on 8th September.
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