Frost & Sullivan Hosts Customer Interaction Singapore Summit in Sentosa Island

Aug. 2, 2011 - PRLog -- Singapore, 28 July 2011 – Frost & Sullivan hosted the Customer Interaction Singapore Summit on July 28, 2011 at the Amara Sanctuary Sentosa Singapore. With the support of Platinum sponsor BT Global Services and Gold Sponsor Genesys, an Alcatel-Lucent company, 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 Andrew Milroy, Vice President of ICT Pacific, Frost & Sullivan. The Keynote address was delivered by Mr Fuad Fachroeddin, Managing Director, Indosat Singapore on winning strategies for next generation customer care.

The summit advanced with presentations from Ms Ruth Rown, Marketing Director, APAC, BT Global Services; Mr. Dave Chin, Senior Manager, Strategic Solutions Engineering APAC Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories; and Mr. Simone Brunozzi, Technology Evangelist, Amazon Web Services, Asia Paicific.

This was followed by one Interactive Panel Discussion, on ‘Breaking through the Country Specific Challenges in IT adoption and Consumer Markets in Singapore and APAC’ moderated by Mr. Shivanu Shukla. He was joined by a panel of senior level executives from International Baccalaureate Org, BigDeal.sg and Blugrapes.

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.

Presentations by Mr. Peter Leung, Head of CRM Marketing, Asia Pacific, BT Global Services on How can cloud based services improve your customer experience followed by Andrew Milroy, Vice President, ICT Practice, Frost & Sullivan, Mr. Ryan Lim Business Director, Blugrapes and Jack Woo, Co-Founder, BigDeal.sg.

The summit wrapped up with an Interactive Panel Discussion ‘Transforming Customer Experience, It Isn't Just Talk’. Moderated by Mr. Andrew Milroy, Vice President, ICT Practice, Asia Pacific, Frost & Sullivan 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. Panelists include senior representatives from BT Global Services, Contact Centre Association of Singapore, Indosat Singapore Ptd Ltd and Institute of Systems Science, NUS.


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

Contact Centre Association of Singapore (CCAS) is a Supporting Association 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:

Jessie Loh
Corporate Communications
E: jessie.loh@frost.com
P: +65 6890 0942

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.