Introduction
Australia enjoys a high-wage consumer market with great potential for firms eager to provide excellent customer service. As they consider post-pandemic life, Australians continue to have a higher savings rate than they did before COVID-19 began. And, even amid concerns about a global economic slowdown, they foresee greater spending on everything from groceries to clothes to air travel.
Australian’s Spending Expectations
Expected Spending Over Next 2-3 Months Per Category, Net Intent
Australians are cautiously optimistic about the future, an outlook that consultancy McKinsey & Company assigns to the country’s young and wealthy demographics. This makes the land down under a potentially lucrative market—if enterprises can offer the right services.
Yet, as a CX market, Australia also confronts providers with a host of unique challenges. Oligopolies dominate major sectors of the economy. Domestic delivery costs are high.
Recently, consumers have begun to shift from voice-based care to digital channels, though the migration remains selective across verticals.
Given the cross-current of potential and pitfalls, this paper shows how a true outsourcing leader offers the best pathway to provisioning CX excellence.
Grappling with the Reality of Australian Domestic Customer Service
Two factors make domestic CX delivery exceedingly difficult in Australia: high costs and an entrenched WFH labor force. According to the Australian Customer Experience Professionals Association, frontline customer service representatives make AU$ 57,700 a year. And a third of representatives reported receiving a bonus in 2022. This makes domestic service delivery costs among the highest in the world, eclipsed only by the likes of Japan and Germany.
In Australia, 57% of contact center employees continue to work from home, and the overall labor market remains tight. The strong negotiating position that workers enjoy, combined with talent poaching from rival industries, means the high share of remote workers appears unlikely to change significantly soon. Unsurprisingly, contact center managers report their biggest concern stems from a “disconnected workforce.”
Moreover, core industries are dominated by a small number of providers. Research published by an economist at the Australian Department of Industry, Innovation and Science concluded that telecommunications, educational support services and electricity transmission are among the most concentrated sectors. While this trend produces both economic benefits and drawbacks, the author noted “digital maturity” as a crucial factor for firms seeking to gain clout in the Australian market.
In other words, firms need digital tools to get ahead in Australia, yet doing so with a domestic workforce threatens operating margins. For outsourcers, this presents wide-ranging opportunities. But the learning curve can be steep. CX management partners must be capable of identifying digital enhancements for their clients. And given the size of many enterprises, outsourcers must be capable of offering vertical expertise at scale.
Tailored Approaches for CX Excellence in Australia
Facing the realities of domestic customer care, enterprises are more willing than in other demand markets to offshore CX management. Cost reduction motivates many outsourcing decisions, as does the flexibility of a workforce to ramp up or down quickly.
Rank the Following in Order of Importance for Your Organization’s Outcomes
(Larger the number, the more important the reason)
As they weigh their options, many enterprises turn to offshore solutions. Above all, Australian firms favor the Philippines as one of their top destinations of choice. Labor arbitrage certainly helps. Thanks to a long heritage of English as an official language, and the language of instruction in public schools and universities, most Filipino workers communicate in native-level English.
In recent years, CX agents have demonstrated a growing skillset that includes tech support, sales, and social media brand management that further enhance the value proposition of offshore delivery from the Philippines. Filipinos are eager to boost their tech skills, a major benefit as outsourcing becomes increasingly driven by cutting-edge technologies like artificial intelligence. For instance, agents at one Philippines-based outsourcer are embracing AI as a means of realizing 14% productivity gains, according to a study by researchers at MIT and Stanford.
To help secure these benefits for the long term, in 2022 an inter-agency program set up by the government began work to identify key skills for digital innovation and provide training. In tandem, the investment promotion agency Contact Center Association of the Philippines has consistently worked with the government for friendly regulation and startup incentives for outsourcers in the country.
Nowhere are the fruits of this human talent and government support more evident than in the capital of Manila. The global advisory Tholons ranked Manila eighth in its list of Super Cities for Global Innovation, outpacing the likes of Mumbai, New York, and Delhi.
The result of these strengths is the Philippines enjoys a robust outsourcing ecosystem.
Australia CX Delivery Location Key Attributes
On a scale of 1-8 (1-undesirable, 8-very desirable), identify the most important factors for an offshore contact center destination.
How Inspiro Targets Australian Enterprises
Few firms have seized on the advantages offered by outsourcing in the Philippines as Inspiro. Since entering the Australian market in 2011, Inspiro has differentiated itself based on its scalable English-speaking workforce, today spread out over a dozen contact centers globally, including nine in the Philippines. (It will open a tenth center in the Philippines in 3Q2023.) From these centers, Inspiro’s agents express malasakit, exporting a Filipino sense of “genuine care and concern” for customers. Through warm interactions, the firm personalizes calls and chats.
Meanwhile, across voice and digital channels, the outsourcer’s agents possess vertical expertise in travel and tourism, e-commerce, banking and insurance, and healthcare. That vertical expertise couples with the right technologies to meet the growing but selective digitalization of Australian consumers. Until 2020, Australian consumers relied far more heavily than those in Asia, America, or Western Europe on voice-based care. That has begun to change though, with telemedicine, e-learning, and wellness apps becoming wildly popular in Australia.
Crucially, Inspiro’s expertise is scalable. The outsourcer has a track record of successfully ramping up agent counts—from a few dozen agents working on a campaign to several thousand if need be—quickly. Baseline volumes can ramp up 20-30 times. For a series of clients, this translates into headcounts increasing from a few hundred to nearly 2,000 agents. While having the workforce in place is crucial to ramp-up ability, Inspiro’s scalability also relies on a rigorous process of review and implementation of best practices.
Ramp Best Practices
Remarkably, this swift reaction to changes in contact volumes occurs in tandem with record high CSAT scores among the client’s vendors. Indeed, several of the company’s Stevie Awards for customer service excellence trace back to its ramp-up campaigns. Given the large market share of telecoms, banks, and other firms in Australia, such an ability to scale amounts to customer care without hitches or increases in wait times for end-users.
Whereas an outsourcer’s work-from-home capacity is crucial in markets like the United States and France, on-site scalability carries greater value in Australia. What explains the preference for on-site delivery?
For starters, the persistence of WFH domestically means that on-site delivery based offshore lends balance to overall delivery flows. But the larger reason is that Australian firms are highly concerned about data protection and regulatory compliance. Last year cyber-attacks against a major telecom, a healthcare provider, an e-commerce site, and a supermarket resulted in tens of millions of Australians having their personal information compromised.
Growing demand for regulatory compliance and robust data protections are hallmarks of client demands in Australia, as indicated by the Omnibus Survey. This aim is more easily realized at on-site locations. Preferably, such sites will operate with all relevant security certifications, such as those that Inspiro possesses.
Outsourcer Competitive Advantages: Australia
On a scale of 1-8 (1-undesirable, 8-very desirable), what do you see as the competitive advantages that an outsourcer must offer to win your business?
Conclusions
Given the high domestic CX management costs in Australia, many enterprises are ready to entertain the idea of offshore solutions. Offshore searches often lead to the Philippines, a country that has gained a reputation as an offshore location with a large labor force of English speakers and significant cost savings.
Despite this willingness to offshore to the Philippines, enterprises must be satisfied that a partner offers the right strengths to meet the needs of Australian consumers. And robust protections must be in place to protect customer data and adhere to national regulations. Moreover, the spread of e-commerce in Australia of late has helped stir enterprises toward digital transformation.
Successful CX entails more than just offering a chatbot to consumers; it relies on vertical expertise that’s honed toward patterns in digital consumerism. The outsourcing partner needs to deliver a talented workforce with the right vertical expertise to satisfy Australian consumers.
To deliver CX excellence, Inspiro combines the key advantages of delivery from the Philippines with vertical expertise. Moreover, its pedigree is honed by certifications that ensure robust data protections to meet the regulatory and business needs of Australian outsourcers. By drawing on these strengths, Inspiro can enable partners to take advantage of the unique consumer habits of Australian end-users, in the process delivering CX excellence and opening the way to a valuable consumer base.
