With a new financial year fast approaching, optimism is in short supply across Australia’s commercial landscape. Improving operational efficiency and customer experience will help your business withstand whatever economic shocks and knocks lie ahead.
Higher fuel prices, courtesy of the conflict in the Middle East, have had a knock-on effect for businesses of all stripes and sizes; throwing costings, sales forecasts and profit projections into disarray.
Rising inflation – it spiked to 4.6 per cent in the March 2026 quarter – has added to the angst, compelling the Reserve Bank to press ahead with its third interest rate rise for the year in May 2026. All signs suggest there could be more to come; depressing demand and exacerbating the country’s long running cost of living crisis.
Given this raft of economic challenges, it’s hardly surprising business confidence is at a low ebb.
It fell sharply in March – down 29 points, according to the NAB Monthly Business Survey results released in April. That’s the second largest monthly fall in the survey’s history, on par only with the drops that occurred during the GFC and after the onset of the Covid crisis.
Riding out tough times
With conditions likely to remain volatile and challenging into 2027, businesses that hope to ride out the disruption must look for ways to boost their resilience.
Many face make-or-break choices, around how they’ll manage rising costs and maintain sales and profitability until better times come around.
A straightforward headcount reduction may seem the obvious move but, for many businesses, it’s likely to prove a false economy. Unless a cull occurs in conjunction with an overhaul of systems and processes, expecting the same output from a lesser number of employees is likely to result in slipping standards and corner cutting.
It can also put a dint in morale. If workers who’ve avoided the axe feel demotivated and anxious about their own prospects, they’re not going to deliver the standout customer experience today’s demanding consumers and commercial buyers expect and demand.
That presents a risk for future focused businesses, particularly those operating in crowded mature industries where there’s competition aplenty nipping at their heels.
Optimising customer journeys and the processes that support them
That’s why finding ways to make your operations more streamlined and efficient whilst elevating, rather than degrading, customer experience, is critical.
It should start with understanding what it is like to be your customer. This could include mapping your service designs and customer journeys to identify friction points – unnecessary processes and tasks that impede your efforts to resolve enquiries, orders and issues quickly, and deliver a consistent service to customers across all channels. However, we have found that frontline teams already know where the friction points are and simply asking for their input can lead to some quick wins.
How you interface with your customers is an exploration exercise that may well highlight the fragile or fragmented nature of your ICT infrastructure. Relying on legacy applications and disjointed point solutions is rarely a recipe for consistently excellent customer experience and can make responding swiftly to emerging opportunities more difficult.
You’re also likely to become aware of the existence of knowledge gaps – disparities between the information and skills your employees currently have and those they need to support customers more efficiently.
Armed with these insights, you’ll be able to develop a transformation roadmap that identifies and prioritises initiatives to optimise your operations and equip your employees with the tools they need to deliver speedy, stand-out service. An AI-powered knowledge surfacing solution, for example, can put detailed, accurate data at the fingertips of contact centre agents and customer service staff; making it easy for them to provide immediate answers to the trickiest of questions.
Setting your business up for a stronger future
It’s a tough time to be in business and the upcoming financial year is likely to see many local enterprises struggle to maintain profitability and growth. Optimising your operations and improving the customer experience you deliver will make your business more resilient and see it better placed to exploit new opportunities when conditions improve. If you’re intent on surviving and thriving in FY2027 and beyond, it’s a strategy that will serve you extremely well.