Call automation can make or break perceptions of the quality of customer service offered by wireless service providers, depending on how well that automation works, according to a series of surveys from Vocal Laboratories Inc.
VocaLabs measures the user friendliness of telephone-based customer service, delivered by traditional call centers and self-serve technologies, for a variety of industries, including wireless. The group recently surveyed customers of wireless carriers, including AT&T Wireless Services Inc., Cingular Wireless L.L.C., Sprint PCS and Verizon Wireless, to see how each fared with troubled customers.
VocaLabs rated the carriers on caller satisfaction, based on how satisfied or dissatisfied customers were with their overall experiences; and on call completion, based on the percentage of callers able to complete their tasks in a single call. Using data and call recordings from the customers surveyed, the group determined raw scores for both caller satisfaction and call completion for each carrier and then assigned letter grades.
Verizon Wireless was the only carrier to receive an A, which it got for caller satisfaction. The carrier also received the only B, for call completion. AWS scored a C in caller satisfaction and a D for call completion; Cingular received Cs for both caller satisfaction and call completion; and Sprint PCS got Ds in both categories.
“These differences are highly significant and indicate a substantial variation in the quality of customer experiences from the four companies,” said VocaLabs.
Compared with VocaLabs’ last quarterly survey, overall service levels slipped slightly, with only AWS improving from a D to a C in caller satisfaction. Meanwhile, Cingular improved from a D to a C in call completion since the last quarterly survey, with Sprint and Verizon slipping and AWS holding steady.
The correlation between call automation and satisfied customers is strong, VocaLabs said. Its study showed Verizon and Cingular, which had the most satisfied customers, also had the highest rates of call automation. The company notes that call automation can speed routine transactions for customers and free human resources for more complicated calls.
“The key, however, is providing automated options which are simple and friendly enough that callers don’t get confused or intimidated, yet still powerful enough to provide answers in most cases,” VocaLabs said in a recommendation that appears challenging to meet. Indeed, the group reported long hold times to be the most common overall complaint and recommended automation as a strategy for reducing hold times. The second-most-common complaint, however, was that callers had difficulty understanding and navigating automated systems.
Further proof of the potential of call automation systems is reflected in another VocaLabs study, this one of Liberty Wireless, which provides prepaid and postpaid wireless services under a mobile virtual network operator model.
“When we benchmark Liberty Wireless’ voice-automated self-service applications, we find that Liberty’s system provides a substantially higher level of overall customer service than other major wireless carriers,” said Peter Leppik, chief executive officer of VocaLabs.
Liberty’s customer-care capabilities, including caller satisfaction and call completion, were both awarded As. The company attributed its success to its self-service interactive voice response applications, provided by BeVocal. The applications enable account balance inquiries, minute refill requests and bill payment.
The findings point to bigger trends in customer care, according to Dan Enthoven, director of marketing at BeVocal. “Automation is really, actually improving customer service,” he emphasized, while live call agents are not.
Studies have shown that well-designed, highly usable automated systems are preferred to live call agents, he said, noting the significance of “well-designed, highly usable” systems.
For example, Liberty used in-house automated customer applications before it outsourced them to BeVocal. Then, approximately 17 percent of callers were actually using the automated applications, with the rest requesting live operator assistance. With the BeVocal system, however, more than half of Liberty’s customers use the automated system to complete tasks.
