Frustrated consumers are increasingly fed up with outdated tech ruining customer service. A new study from Pegasystems and YouGov reveals that 77% of customers in North America and the UK want businesses to prioritise improving customer interactions, yet many feel companies are more interested in profit-driven tech investments than actually fixing broken systems.
A growing problem is evident: more than half of consumers say dealing with businesses today is harder than it was ten years ago, despite advancements in technology. Long wait times, having to repeat the same information to multiple representatives, and underprepared customer service agents top the list of complaints.
Many consumers also report system failures, with nearly a third saying customer service agents struggle with slow or broken systems, while others experience website and app crashes that disrupt their interactions.
The cost of ignoring customer frustration
These frustrations have real consequences, pushing nearly half of consumers to warn others about bad service experiences and over a third to switch to competitors that offer better support. Despite this, many businesses remain trapped by legacy technology.
A separate survey of executives by Protiviti found that nearly 70% see outdated, disconnected systems as a major roadblock to innovation, with the cost of managing this technical debt estimated at $2.41 trillion annually in the U.S. alone. Some industry leaders see the potential of advanced technology, such as AI but in reality, the adoption is quite slow.
Don Schuerman, chief technology officer, Pega, said: “Businesses have to start taking the amount of technical debt they are managing seriously and examine ways they can use new innovations such as generative AI to make the existing systems they have in place work better for everyone. In an age where customers are more demanding than ever, many of their needs are not being met as a direct result of organisations carrying technical debt.”