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Service Provider Maturation and the Commitment to Customers
As with anything else we encounter, there is a clear maturing process through which service providers’ appreciation for the customer grows. It is only through this process that carriers reach that state of nirvana in which responsibility to customers and customer care becomes central. During this maturing process, the evolving providers comprising the sector also take on different primary foci or business objectives. Unfortunately, in the telecom sector, the end-users were not always the primary focus of providers during its maturation, as shown in Table 1. This, in turn has lead to many of the customer care issues experienced in the recent past.
The framework below begins to shed light on why end-users have and will continue to experience customer service deficiencies. It captures what many of us probably recognize at an intuitive level, providing a structure for the remainder of our discussion and spotlighting the importance of service quality in carriers’ maturation process.
This model provides a basic structure for understanding why, at times, customer care and service quality have taken a back seat. The end-users’ ride down the competitive road was often chock full of potholes that ultimately dampened the growth prospects for new market entrants. This was particularly evident in the CLEC sector.
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Quality of service (QoS) is a paramount buying criterion, especially when the service being purchased is mission-critical. |
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| The Early Customer Experience with CLECs
The CLEC sector has followed the development process outlined above. Many failed to mature quickly enough and are, for a variety of reasons, no longer around. Many, maybe most, first generation CLECs didn’t truly grasp the importance of customer care. These companies were largely engaged in a land-grab, cheered on by investors. Network deployment for first generation facilities-based CLECs was, without a doubt, the primary objective. As networks were rolled out, CLECs began their push for customers primarily on the basis of price (“XX% off the incumbent’s rates” was a common pitch, for instance). Unwitting end-users, based on decades of experience with the Bell system, assumed that all carriers were created equal. They quickly discovered differently. Today’s surviving CLECs are evolving into the “Established” stage, understanding that customer care and service quality are indeed critical success factors in the communications industry. Some even tout better customer care vis-à-vis the “stodgy” incumbents as their prime differentiator—a claim born out by their lower customer churn rates.
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