By: Jeff Nicholson
Telecommunications companies do lots of things right. But customer care?
- A study in the U.S. and UK reports that a mere 42 percent of customers are satisfied with the treatment, relationship and services they receive from their mobile network operators.
- A recent study in Australia poses the question: "Why is the quality of customer care being provided by telecommunications companies failing to meet consumers' expectations when the services they provide generally do?"
With customer churn on the rise across the industry, improving the customer experience is paramount in attracting, retaining and satisfying customers—and effective management and use of customer data and data analytics is the key to gaining a competitive edge, making their customers happier, and improving performance.
#1: Start With Customer Centricity
Every company claims that it's customer centric. But, there is a vast chasm between most business' claims, actual organizational structures, and service delivery. Instead of organizing around customers; businesses have organized around products and channels—and that interferes with customer focus. Recognizing this, and finding ways across existing structures to standardize, improve, share and enrich customer data, is a first big step.
Customers like simple, they like convenient—and they like things that fit. So it's important to strive for that elusive 360-degree view. Armed with perspective on customer interactions, preferences, and usage patterns and needs, it becomes considerably easier to shift from sales pitches to customer conversations and to match services to people—and build relationships that last.
#2: Focus on Cross Channel Customer Dialogue
With customers suffering from ad fatigue, overstuffed inboxes and mailboxes, and social media providing alternate sources of product insight, it is essential to create interactions that take on a dialogue format and are more focused on the specific needs and preferences of the customer. Telling customers "we value your business" is not enough.
Effective dialogues are two-way, built from new inputs to the conversation, are channel agnostic, and encompass both inbound and outbound conversations. Adding predictive analytics and customer intelligence into day-to-day workflows is essential, as these conversations often have a give-and-take aspect to them: they recognize that providing additional customer benefits (a bundled discount, unlimited text, etc.) can result in a longer, stronger customer relationship that provides higher ROI and a better customer experience over the course of an extended customer lifecycle.
