A/NZ companies learning of outages from customers

Over two in five (42%) companies from Australia and New Zealand are alerted to major technology issues such as outages by their own customers, new research suggests.

A survey from digital operations management PagerDuty found that many companies are still reacting to technology issues after they have already negatively affected customers.

The research also found that 29% of businesses experience outages and other major issues at least once per week, and only 2% have fully automated the process of resolving these issues. Around 30% have no automation in place as part of the process whatsoever.

The impact of unplanned outages can be significant for both the business and its employees.

In Australia and New Zealand, 55% of respondents report having to routinely divert resources to unplanned work as a result of the technology issues, with 68% stating that major technology issues result in extra work.

Meanwhile, 61% stated that technology issues lead to unhappy customers, and 25% said such issues resulted in a damaged brand.

Worldwide, 59% of employees said unplanned work due to major technology issues results in more stress and anxiety, 53% said it reduces their work-life balance and 27% said it results in decreased interest in their jobs.

“The world is always on. Increasingly complex IT ecosystems and rising customer expectations are extremely difficult to manage,” PagerDuty VP of Product Jonathan Rende said.

“When delays, downtimes or outages occur, it not only diverts resources away from critical projects but it often has far-reaching consequences such as lost customers and revenue, reputational damage and employee impact.”

Image credit: ©stock.adobe.com/au/Jens Jensen