Local businesses believe that customer experience culture in Malta is still lacking, according to a survey that gauged the perception on the subject.
The 129 company representatives who participated in the survey also believe that more needs to be done to ensure that back-end staff understand customer experience.
The company representatives were surveyed during the ninth edition of HR GIG customer experience conference held earlier this month.
Customer experience (CX) refers to the interactions that customers have with a company at all stages of the customer journey. This includes: the way a customer views an advert, pays a bill, navigates through a website or deals with customer service.
The conference brought businesses together to discuss the topics of employee experience and customer experience in Malta. During the event, statistician Vince Marmarà carried out a live survey among those present.
The business representatives who participated in the survey consisted of HR professionals (49%), C-Suite executives (27%), CX professionals (15%) and others (9%). Participants represented a diverse range of industries: hospitality (17.7%), financial services and gaming (19%), software development (12.2%), transportation and aviation (10.9%), public sector (8.8%) and other industries (31.3%).
They were presented with statements and asked to rank them on a scale from one to five – where one meant a low score and five a high one.
More needs to be done to ensure that back-end staff understand the customer experience
When presented with the statement “The level of customer experience in Malta is of high quality”, the average score was 1.8 on the five-point scale
Asked if their organisation actively sought customer feedback, the average score stood at 3.9 and participants scored an average 3.5 when asked if they had a strong customer-centric culture embraced by all staff.
Asked if back-end staff clearly understand how they contribute to the overall customer experience, the average score was of 3.1 out of 5.
Marmarà noted that the sample was not representative of the business population – since those surveyed were the ones who attended the conference and were, therefore, interested in the topic of customer experience.
However, he believed that the results gave an indication of the overall sentiment.
“Local companies appreciate the importance of customer feedback about the services offered. At the same time, they believe that companies can be more customer-centric. They believe more needs to be done to ensure that back-end staff understand the customer experience.
“Key business leaders believe that the customer experience in Malta is low. All this shows the need for more synchronised strategies to strengthen the relationship between employees and customers to be able to provide a better service,” he said.
The results echoed research carried out by PwC Malta and published in an e-book available on their website. It states that when customers were asked what drove them away from a company, the top two reasons were “bad employee attitudes” and “unfriendly service”.
HR GIG 9 partnered with The Malta Chamber of Commerce, Enterprise and Industry, ISL, Shireburn Software Ltd, Outdoor Living Malta, StreetHR, APS Bank and The Hilton Malta.