Vodafone Qatar has listened closely to its customers, and as a result, took home a record 8 call center awards at an industry event last December. The awards include “best social media integration,” and “best CEM process.” The operator was also awarded “best call center song,” which might seem like a trivial detail, but when you consider that brands like BMW hire teams of sound engineers just to design the alert tones in a vehicle, it makes a lot of sense.

Vodafone Qatar’s head of customer care and experience, Deirdre Hutchinson, explained the initiative. “We have built 'embraCE' by listening closely to what our customers are saying; recruiting and retaining best customer care people and loving our brand. In four years, we have achieved a single unmatched customer experience management platform with feedback captured through the most effective ways for our customers.”

Growing impact of online chat

Customers today express their opinions through more channels than ever before, and keeping a finger on the pulse of all of them is important. In fact, service providers who collect feedback through at least three channels have 22-percent higher advocacy scores, according to data from NICE Systems. Online chat is one channel that is growing in importance, and greater use of the chat function positively correlates with the wireless customer care experience.

Two recent studies from JD Power examined the performance of wireless customer care in the U.S. across full-service and non-contract providers. The studies examine performance across contact channels including phone (both automated and CSR-assisted), retail, and online, and measure satisfaction based on factors like resolution efficiency and session duration.

“For wireless customers, online chat is an efficient and immediate experience for problem resolution. This contributes to higher levels of satisfaction, especially pertaining to service issues or questions such as billing or service and device-related issues associated with upgrades,” said Kirk Parsons, senior director of the telecom services practice at J.D. Power.

“As carriers release new products and services, such automated systems as online chat must continue to evolve to address harder-to-answer questions related to technology support.”

Acting on customer insight

Just as important as capturing the voice of the customer is acting on this rich data within a short timeframe. This data simply must be shared horizontally and vertically through the service provider organization to have the greatest impact.

BT Business used solutions from NICE Systems to improve its Net Promoter Index (NPI) score by incorporating proactive follow-up action. BT believes strongly in the need for a closed-loop feedback approach, and the results speak for themselves.

“Implementing the NICE Fizzback solution has delivered fast and positive results,” said Steph Cole, general manager, voice of customer, BT Business. “The BT Faults and Repair scores over the course of several months reveal significant improvements with NPI improving by an impressive 38 points and agent satisfaction by 23%, with numbers continuing to rise.”

Telefónica UK and Germany have empowered their customers by providing visibility of real-time network capabilities and status checks with software from SpatialBuzz. This provides operators with real-time information of where customers are experiencing problems and how they should focus their efforts. It also reduces the load on call centers and improves support efficiency. gain, the results speak for themselves. Telefónica's call centers have achieved network-related call reductions of 49% on normal days, rising to 72% during major incidents.

"The way end-users want to interact with service providers, merchants and each other is changing so our solution helps simplify customer interaction processes, whilst allowing customers to remain in control of their lives," said Leon Hardwick, Director, Global Sales & Marketing at SpatialBuzz. "Telefonica UK and Germany have proven with the deployment of SpatialBuzz, that the adoption of a more transparent approach to communicating the status and capability of the services an operator provides is a positive step to help retain and acquire customers."