Banks must lift their game to cater for tech savvy micro-businesses, says Telstra

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 15 July 2010 16:54

IT Industry - Strategy

Telstra has called on Australia's financial institutions to improve their customer service to microbusinesses as these businesses become increasingly mobile and increasingly run by tech-savvy younger generations, instead of the baby boomers.

Telstra has released a white paper detailing its research in support of this conclusion. According to Telstra, "60 percent of micro business owners are pre boomers (20 percent) and baby boomers (40 percent), which means that 40 percent of today's micro business owners will be retiring in the next decade. With leadership passing to Gen X and Y, banks need to change the way they interact with this younger (more tech savvy) audience."

Telstra defines a micro business as having between one and five employees. It says there are around 600,000 such businesses employing 15 percent of the workforce.

It adds that the 66 percent of micro businesses that operate out of multiple sites is expected to increase to 73 percent by 2012, representing an additional 92,296 workers.

Telstra has developed three new technological concepts designed to help financial institutions address the widening customer dissatisfaction among micro businesses: 'Experts Anywhere', 'My Branch Anywhere' and the 'Personalised Contact Centre'.

The report's author, Telstra Enterprise and Government general manager for industry development, Rocky Scopelliti, said the white paper, 'Servicing Micro Businesses – What Financial Institutions Need to Know', highlights how communications technology could assist financial services organisations improve the customer satisfaction offered to micro businesses.

According to Scopelliti, "With the explosion in smartphones, laptops and the growth in new devices in the home, now is the time for the financial services sector to assess new and emerging technologies to help them attract, retain and cross sell to micro business customers."

Telstra's study found that, when it comes to serving microbusinesses, financial institutions are already behind the eight ball. "Micro Businesses tend to have a lower satisfaction rating than the total population. Critically, dissatisfaction is greatest for the highest value customers and for the 30–54 year age group (the next generation of micro business owners)," Telstra's white paper says.

A key to Telstra's research findings is a methodology called Worker Type Segmentation (WTS), developed by Telstra. It says "This approach identified six worker type segments (differentiated by current ICT usage and by the number of locations at which work is conducted) that are likely to interact with their financial services providers in different ways."