Editor’s Note: Welcome to our weekly Reality Check column. We’ve gathered a group of visionaries and veterans in the mobile industry to give their insights into the marketplace.
As mobile data and voice traffic soars, Brazilian service providers are understandably focused on growing their consumer base. But they may be leaving money on the table—and I’m talking big money—if they don’t also pursue the enterprise market. But the needs of enterprise customers are very different from those of consumers.
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Brazil’s economy is surging: The BBC reported in March that the country has become the world’s sixth-largest economy, according to Brazil’s finance minister. The article stated that Brazil’s growth rate of 2.7% in 2011 easily outpaced the United Kingdom’s growth rate of 0.8 percent. Brazil’s torrid pace of growth translates into greater demand for communication services across the board.
In going after the enterprise market, service providers need to acknowledge that business customers are very different than residential subscribers. The acquisition process for business customers is different in its nature, length and dynamics. The bigger the corporate customer, the higher its communication expenses, and so businesses expect their service providers to supply them with smooth, error-free processes, a high level of support, fast response time on technical issues and empowering management tools to control and manage their communication expenses in a cost-effective way.
And this where we’re seeing a disconnect between service providers and their enterprise customers. A recent Frost & Sullivan survey conducted for Amdocs identified key gaps between business customers’ expectations and the services they are receiving. For example, although service providers believe that “less than 5%” of orders fall out, 30% of enterprise customers said order fall out was experienced “fairly often,” “very often” or “always.” Clearly a mismatch.
Just as unhappy residential consumers churn, so do enterprise clients. Dissatisfaction with customer service (63%), recurring order problems (59%), lack of service quality (45%) and poor customer service (36%) were cited as the major reasons for enterprise customer churn. Interestingly, according to the survey, larger corporations seem to be more forgiving: 85% of them tolerate service level agreement (SLA) breaches, compared to “only” 45% of the smaller enterprises (up to a 100 employees). The reason for the difference might be the fact that it’s a major undertaking for a large corporation to switch service providers.
At present, business customers are also too dependent on assisted channels for receiving information and handling disputes, tech support and billing control, which places a heavy load on call centers, leading to reduced service provider margins and as far as the customer is concerned, an annoyingly high average handling time.
Enterprise-specific solutions
So what’s the solution? A new breed of enterprise-specific solutions is emerging that will enable service providers to remain competitive and grow revenue with shorter order-to-cash cycles, enhanced customer experience and accelerated time to market of new enterprise offerings—all while reducing costs. Many support both enterprise and residential customers on a single, converged system.
On the customer management side, this latest generation of enterprise solutions empowers enterprise customers to self-manage and self-monitor their accounts; reduce average call handling time and increase first-call resolution; reduce support costs and field service visits; and provide real-time SLA jeopardy identification to reduce penalties and improve customer satisfaction.
Business customers expect their service providers to understand the way they do business, their organizational structure and motivation. Service providers need to ensure they have the solutions that enable them to do so—and with the Brazilian market as robust as it is, they should make it a top priority.
Manuel Briseno is director of marketing at Amdocs, Caribbean and Latin America division
