Avaya customers who are attending the ongoing Avaya Technology Forum in Bangkok cited increased levels of customer satisfaction, followed by retention and brand loyalty as their primary areas of focus, as the emphasize driving more effective customer engagement.
Based on surveys conducted in the first half of this month, Avaya customers view enhanced business agility, followed by increased productivity and mobility as the major outcomes from better engagement among their teams.
There was a strong mood of optimism around business growth prospects, with four out of five customers predicting growth for their business in the next 12 months, and 44% anticipating that growth to be in excess of 10%.
When asked about the technology developments having the biggest impact on their business, customers revealed that the rapid deployment of new applications and services was helping their transformation most, with 54% citing this as one of the three most important developments.
They also said that the evolution to a software-defined architecture (51%), and the use of big data and analytics to drive customer lifetime value (49%) were important factors for their business.
In terms of challenges faced, Avaya customers cited security — with 69% ranking this in their Top 3 challenges — and network downtime (61%) as the two biggest issues they are facing in supporting the rapidly evolving needs of their businesses.
These were also ranked highly by Avaya channel partners, 61% of whom also included managing complexity as one of their top three challenges.
During the forum, Avaya demonstrated security enhancements, surveillance solutions and its Avaya Fabric Connect and Avaya SDN Fx networking portfolio.
When asked about the single biggest improvement they would like to make to their network, one in four respondents focused on having more flexibility for their network to grow with their business needs.
While not quite as confident of strong growth in the coming 12 months as their customers, 68% of Avaya channel partners predict growth in the next 12 months.