Idea Transcript
OSS/BSS - Fostering customer intimacy (/features/analysis/628-636) Analysis (/Features/Analysis)
Created: 03 February 2010
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Are telcos any good at understanding their customers and then responding to them? Gordon Rawling presents research that provides the answers The widespread adoption of broadband, coupled with the rise of social networks, has led to a dramatic shift in the traditional relationship between brands and their customers consumers have never been so empowered. They now resist one-way dialogues where brands broadcast messages to them, and instead, demand to manage their own relationships. And a central part of these expectations is for a consistent experience across all channels. Whether researching online before buying in-store or browsing instore before ordering from a contact centre, customers expect to be able to pick up where they left off. The dynamics of maintaining customer relationships has changed radically in recent years. Consumers now expect relationships to be managed on their terms. As a result, brands need to demonstrate that they are actively listening, responding and personalising their services to individual customers' wishes. As technology companies, you would expect operators to be successful at responding to customers' needs, particularly when large marketing budgets are being spent on driving more profitable customer relationships. We wanted to understand how much progress the telecoms industry had made in this direction and commissioned some independent research to help us. The research questioned 46 senior customer management executives at operators in Western and Eastern Europe and the Middle East along with 3,750 consumers. Here, we outline the key findings and provide insight into how operators can use their existing infrastructure to deliver a consistent and compelling experience through the consumer's channel of choice. Fragmented systems and inconsistent customer service The research reveals that customer-facing teams in many telecommunications firms are operating in isolation (or at the very least out of synch). This lack of integration is highlighted by operators' inability to provide one service number for customers to address their all their queries: two-thirds of operators (65 per cent) admitted that customers are unable to resolve queries by calling just one number. This, perhaps, is not surprising when we consider that just one in six operators (17%) claim that all teams work from the same system and are directed to follow the same strategies for customer service, retention and recruitment across all channels.
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In an extremely competitive sector, operators that have succeeded in uniting customer-facing departments and focusing systems around customer needs are the ones with a distinct advantage. However, digging deeper into the findings, we also see that many operators already have in place the foundations necessary to deliver a consistent experience to customers across all channels. By using technology to support three basic principles, organisations will have in place the right customer service strategy to serve customers in an increasingly digital world. Firstly, they need to provide a seamless and consistent experience for all customer interactions. Secondly, they need to extend the understanding of the customer throughout the enterprise, allowing all areas to make informed customer-based decisions. And finally, operators need to use intelligence on their customers more effectively, by transforming customer data into actionable information and getting the right information to the right person (or customer) at the right time. With this approach, operators will be ideally positioned to take advantage of the commercial opportunities presented by having a loyal and lucrative customer community. About the author: Gordon Rawling is Senior Marketing Director, Oracle Communications
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Clear demand for personalised, consistent and interactive services The public indicated a clear preference for web-based customer service. When asked to rank the various service channels in order of preference, 83 per cent chose the internet as their first or second choice, 62 per cent chose e-mail, while just 32 per cent selected a contact centre. But simply having a web page for customers is not enough. Instead, they want their internet experience to be personalised and interactive. When asked what would encourage them to use the internet instead of ringing a contact centre, 47 per cent said the ability to view account trends and ways of saving money; 45 per cent said a personalised online service with tailored offers and 44 per cent were keen on services such as live chats with agents.
Along with this customised experience, encouraging adoption of self-service tools is also a matter of creating a compelling online experience. Self-service can be the platform for creating the personalised, interactive, engaging websites that customer's desire. For instance, it can provide customers with the tools to access support information online, including forums, wikis, feedback forms, support communities, demos and downloads - all at the click of a mouse. Instant messenger tools for live web chats with agents alongside discussion forums with engineers stepping in to resolve queries provides a powerful scenario where customers can channel ideas for product improvements, and gain immediate guidance from technicians on complex issues. A dashboard to compare products, services and tariffs also adds to the customer experience, allowing them to find the most appropriate service that meets their individual needs.
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Deflecting high-volume low-value calls to a website frees agents to handle high-value calls such as queries about new services or products. As the research demonstrates, customers value being able to resolve queries around their own availability and respond with increased loyalty. Despite their best efforts though, telecoms firms have enjoyed little success so far with the self-service initiatives they've deployed. The key here is to ensuring that customers feel confident that the self-service tools online are able to address and solve their queries appropriately.
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Operators across the globe spend millions each year on marketing in a bid to attract new customers, and yet they are allowing customers to simply walk away at the end of their contact. Organisations should consider Customer Relationship Management (CRM) technology that has the ability to flag events in the lifecycle of a customer - such as reaching the end of a contract. It should also be able to recommend to staff the best course of action required to give the business the best chance of continuing the relationship with that customer. The smallest piece of customer information, such as a change of address, should also be the trigger for a whole new set of relevant, revenue generating services (such as new broadband or television). But to take advantage of these opportunities, organisations need to be able to make sense of the wealth of information they hold on their customer base - wherever it resides in the business.
Excessive contact centre resource spent on low value queries The survey also found that operators spent a disproportionate amount of contact centre time dealing with queries that brought little value to the business and that they could easily and more cost effectively handle online. Half of the customer management professionals stated that between 40 per cent and 80 percent of inbound calls concern billing queries. Although operators have attempted to drive these calls to the web, with 96 per cent stating that answers to common billing, product and service questions were available online, there has clearly been limited success: when asked to rate the level of success of their online self-service functionality (1 being unsuccessful and 5 very successful), the average score was just 2.65.
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The key lies in instilling real-time intelligence into any type of business process or customer interaction and combining analytics to recommend the most appropriate recommendation based on the context of the last interaction. For instance, when a customer logs in to their account online the CRM system should swiftly and effectively make targeted product and service offers which relate directly to the customer's issue. Ideally, customer service staff working in contact centres should have access to the same system, supporting the delivery of a consistent experience across multiple channels.
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Organisations across all industries should view the customer from a total life cycle perspective, rather than as separate interactions with the sales, service or marketing teams. Operators will no doubt already have in place the technology to manage relationships with their customers (through any channel of their choice), as they hold details on an individual's interactions with a business, billing history with perhaps some insight into demographic data. What is required is to make these systems work harder and smarter by integrating customer data and systems across the entire organisation, using the wealth of customer data they hold to gain genuine insight into customer behaviour. The entire organisation, and the systems supporting it, needs to be fully integrated.
A clear appetite among consumers for using the internet in preference to all other channels is not being satisfied. Operators are missing a trick here, particularly when we consider the significant cost savings on offer by satisfying this appetite: a single customer interaction can be reduced from $4.50 on the phone to $0.10 online . When the offer is both timely and clearly relevant to the customer, they are more receptive to listening and accepting these offers than if they received a direct mail piece describing the product. When an individual gets in touch with its service provider, organisations should really make the most of this window of opportunity in having the customer's attention.
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The research highlighted how operators are failing to meet these demands. Just under half of operators (46 per cent) claim to offer the ability to view account trends and ways of saving money online, while a mere 13 per cent provided online support agents with instant messaging facilities. More worrying, however, is operators' basic inability to meet customer demands for a personalised service due to the limitations of their systems. Only one-third were able to make recommendations to customers based on the context of each interaction both online and in contact centres; just 11 per cent could do so online.
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With this lack of coordination between departments, providing a consistent brand and customer experience across retail, online and contact centre channels becomes extremely difficult. In order to serve the customer effectively across multiple channels, the whole business - and particularly sales, marketing and customer service departments - needs to be coordinated and structured around addressing the customers' very specific needs.
Inability to retain customers Retaining customers is widely accepted as the essential basis for operators to grow operations and average revenue per user (ARPU). And yet, the research strongly suggests that the systems in place at the vast majority of operators leave them unable to meet this fundamental requirement. Just one-fifth (20 per cent) of respondents confirmed that their organisation actively monitors customers reaching the end of their contracts with systems and processes in place to retain them. One-third (30 per cent) stated that although they could identify end-of-contract customers, they couldn't actively manage customer retention in this way. This neglect was borne out by the public, with more than half (53%) of consumers with mobile contracts claiming that their mobile providers had never contacted them at the end of their contract to entice them into a new one. If we assume ARPU of €20, the total cost to European operators in lost revenue from customer churn could be as much as €46bn per year.
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5G World Series @5GWorldSeries Is the vendor/operator relationship dysfunctional? via @eurocomms spr.ly/6012DHHJg 17h
Openet @OpenetGlobal
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Openet @OpenetGlobal
"The #telecoms industry needs to change, from one laden with legacy software and problems resulting from vendor lock-in, into one promoting #innovation, agility, fast time to market and disruption," says our CEO, Niall Norton. More via @eurocomms 15 Dec 2017
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