Updated 23 June 2011: Frost & Sullivan Hosts Customer Interaction Malaysia Summit in Kuala Lumpur

June 15, 2011 - PRLog -- Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – Frost & Sullivan hosted the Customer Interaction Malaysia Summit on June 15, 2011 at the DoubleTree by Hilton, Kuala Lumpur. With the support of Gold Sponsors Aspect, Interactive Intelligence, Orange Business Services and SAP, Frost & Sullivan and various industry experts discussed how enterprises need to be anticipating their customers’ needs and proactively reaching out to their customers to optimize customer experience.

Themed ‘Preparing for the next decade of Customer Interaction’, the one-day summit opened with remarks by Chairman Mr. Nitin Bhat, Partner and Senior Vice President of Frost & Sullivan. The Keynote address was delivered by Ms. Rozalila Abdul Rahman, Chief Marketing Officer of Telekom Malaysia Berhad on winning strategies for next generation customer care.

The summit advanced with presentations from Mr. Ben Nottle, SAP Asia’s Head of Line of Business Solutions; Mr. Gary R. Blough, Interactive Intelligence’s Executive Vice president of Worldwide Sales; Mr. Mohamad Idham Nawawi, Packet One Networks’ Chief Operating Officer; and Mr. David Toh, Aspect Software’s Asia Pacific Sales Director.

This was followed by an Interactive Panel Discussion on ‘Breaking through the Country Specific Challenges in IT adoption and Consumer Markets in Malaysia’ moderated by Mr. Nitin Bhat. He was joined by a panel of senior level executives from AmBank, Customer Relationship Management and Contact Centre Association of Malaysia (CCAM), Celcom and Maxis.

The second half of the day further discussed trends, technologies and strategies that intelligent leaders are approaching to address customers’ multi-channel environments by understanding customer profiles and behaviour. Achieving and sustaining greater customer loyalty requires new operating models that embed this ‘new intelligence’ to ensure their people, processes, infrastructure, and governance drive optimal customer interactions.

In his presentation ‘Top 10 Global Mega Trends and Their Impact on Customer Expectation’, Mr. Shivanu Shukla, Associate Director of ICT, discussed identifying, defining and evaluating mega trends and their implications for industries and organizations.

Mr. Shukla commented, “The changing demographics and the emerging importance of a new generation, Generation Y, should not be taken lightly. Frost & Sullivan’s Mega Trends research has shown that the Gen Y population will account for 33% of global population by 2020 which amounts to 2.56 billion people and 42% of that figure will be from Asia Pacific.”

Gen Y’s consumption patterns and preferences vary greatly from other demographic segments; Gen Y is accustomed to products and services that are highly personalized and prefers to communicate in a broadcast than a one-on-one mode, as proven by the success of Twitter and Facebook. Organizations will have to dedicate teams to manage their communication through social media. Gen Y is also demanding, impatient and global i.e. Gen Y expects immediate solutions and is good at multitasking, with an overall faster pace.

“While Gen Y is highly impatient, it is also used to self-service. Gen Y looks to social media to help shape its consumer decisions, looking to members of an online community for help and recommendations. Thus, a negative comment has the potential to influence thousands, if not millions, of consumer opinions. Companies will have to address negative situations immediately or face the possibility of long term damage,” said Mr. Shukla.

A presentation by Mr. Haytham Sawalhy, Orange Business Services’ Asia Pacific Director of CRM Solutions on Best Practices for Interactive Voice Response (IVR) followed.

The summit wrapped up with an Interactive Panel Discussion ‘Transforming Customer Experience, It Isn't Just Talk’. Moderated once again by Mr. Nitin Bhat, the focus of the session was on the 360 Opportunities & Challenges in Customer Interaction, the proactiveness of customer service, strategies to improve customer intimacy and meet expectations of the younger generation (Gen X and Gen Y), as well as Social Media and its ROI.

For more details on this summit or to retrieve presentations from this one-day session email your request to nisha.sundrum@frost.com or visit http://www.frost-apac.com/ci/malaysia/.

Aspect, Interactive Intelligence, Orange Business Services and SAP are Gold Sponsors. Business Today and Developing Telecoms are Media Partners while Customer Relationship Management and Contact Centre Association of Malaysia (CCAM) is a Supporting Organization for the summit.

The Generation Y Mega Trend is part of Frost & Sullivan’s Top 50 Global Mega Trends research conducted in conjunction with Frost & Sullivan’s 50th Anniversary celebrations. Frost & Sullivan is proud to be among the top 25 companies with a history of over 50 years that participates in the Information and Consulting Industry worth US$366 billion globally.
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MEDIA CONTACT:

Nisha Sundrum
Corporate Communications
E: nisha.sundrum@frost.com
P: +603.6204.5818

Carrie Low
Corporate Communications
E: carrie.low@frost.com
P: +603.6204.5910

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Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, partners with clients to accelerate their growth. The company's research and consulting services empower clients to generate, evaluate, and implement effective growth strategies.