Legacy technical debt a leading contributor to decline in quality of customer interactions over the last 10 years

Frustrated consumers are demanding businesses invest in new, innovative ways to improve deteriorating customer experiences caused by slow, siloed, and outdated technology, according to research conducted by Pegasystems Inc. (NASDAQ: PEGA), The Enterprise Transformation Company™, and YouGov.

The study polled 4,000 consumers from North America and the United Kingdom on their views around how businesses prioritize their technological investments in customer experience. An overwhelming 77% felt organizations should invest in improvements in how they interact with consumers. More than two thirds (69%) felt companies are currently more interested in tech investments to increase profits than IT modernizations that would help improve customer experience.

Other findings from the research painted a dire picture, including:

  • Things are getting worse, not better: When asked to compare the difficulties of interacting with businesses today versus 10 years ago, more than half (56%) said it is worse now, with over one quarter (26%) strongly agreeing this was the case. This is despite all the general advancements in technology, including generative AI, over this timeframe.
  • Slow, siloed customer service operations: Two thirds (63%) rated customer service wait times as their top experience pain point. Roughly half (51%) cited repeating the same information multiple times to different representatives their next biggest issue. Meanwhile, 40% pointed to problems with customer service agents lacking the necessary information for effective service. This all suggests agents are saddled with siloed systems that slow them from getting the information they need.
  • Website and app disruption on both sides: Almost one third (29%) say customer service agents often tell them that their system is down, slow, or not working as well as it should. A similar number (28%) say that websites or apps they use to interact with businesses are slow, have crashed, or take too long to load, suggesting a significant strain is being placed on systems.
  • Consumers switch and complain when they get bad experiences: Half of respondents (48%) said they share examples of poor customer experience with friends, family and colleagues to ‘warn’ them, while more than one third (37%) say they move to another company that can better meet their needs.

A recent global Protiviti survey of C-level business leaders found that nearly 70% pointed to technical debt – the cost of managing, maintaining, and dealing with the consequences of outdated, disconnected systems – as a significant barrier to their ability to innovate and modernize. This suggests that, despite consumer perceptions, legacy systems and applications are having a significant impact on the ability to deliver satisfying outcomes to consumers. This should come as no surprise - the cost of managing technical debt is estimated to total $2.41 trillion a year in the US alone.

Quotes & Commentary:

“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,” said Don Schuerman, chief technology officer, Pega. “In an age where customers are more demanding than ever, many of their needs are not being met as a direct result of organizations carrying technical debt. Tools like Pega GenAI Blueprint™ can jumpstart transformation projects and enable organizations to rethink and replace inefficient, siloed systems and applications that are not only causing internal problems, but significant external damage to customer experience – and, as a result, brand reputation too.”

Supporting Resources:

  • More information: Pega GenAI Blueprint
  • Demo video: New legacy transformation features in Pega GenAI Blueprint
  • Concept overview video: Reimagining legacy systems with Pega GenAI Blueprint
  • Try it: Pega GenAI Blueprint dashboard

About Pegasystems Pega is The Enterprise Transformation Company that helps organizations Build for Change® with enterprise AI decisioning and workflow automation. Many of the world’s most influential businesses rely on our platform to solve their most pressing challenges, from personalizing engagement to automating service to streamlining operations. Since 1983, we’ve built our scalable and flexible architecture to help enterprises meet today’s customer demands while continuously transforming for tomorrow. For more information on Pega (NASDAQ: PEGA), visit www.pega.com.

All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Press: Jon Brigden Pegasystems Jon.brigden@pega.com

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