Telecom operators need to evolve their customer experience plans to meet new expectations.
We’re experiencing a unique moment in the history of the telecommunications industry. We all know this is a time of unprecedented challenges, including rising customer expectations (especially around digital), market saturation and hypercompetitive markets. It is also a time of unprecedented opportunity. For the first time in history, what is good for the customer also drives shareholder value. A reinvented customer experience that combines digital self-serve and hyper-efficient interactions with live care not only makes customers happy, it’s good for the bottom line.
But are telcos succeeding in reinventing the customer experience? A recent survey revealed while 64% of telco/broadband business decision makers think they know their customers extremely well, only 24% of consumers feel the same way. Another 20% of customers say their provider doesn’t understand them at all.
While this can be attributed to a variety of factors, many organizations are being held back due to a hodgepodge of legacy systems that can’t provide complete 360-degree customer views needed to address customers at the individual level. This puts telcos at risk of customer churn and can impact their reputation. Telcos simply can’t afford for customer experience to be an afterthought and need to develop and implement plans to prioritize it.
How? It all starts with changing perception and investing in the right technology. Here are three things to consider when shaping your CX strategy.
What worked in the past will not work in the future
Historically, the concept of balancing CX and managing profitability for telcos has been viewed as a zero-sum game. When customers demanded high connectivity speeds and data transfer capabilities, telcos focused on cutting costs and protecting their bottom lines. The idea was that as long as cost-cutting measures didn’t negatively impact the customer’s experience, you were doing okay as an organization.
The reality was that cost cutting alone resulted in long wait times and frustrated customers in customer care and retail. Websites certainly improved, but they did little to guide customers proactively to the right products and services. It was up to the customer to work through a dizzying array of plans, phones and account management options. And for many years that was considered the norm. That attitude is no longer acceptable due to the CX revolution – customers have too many options now to accept poor service.
Invest in technology that puts your customer at the center of it all
The good news is it is possible to deliver world-class self-service and dramatically improve the efficiency of live care. This isn’t a theoretical vision of the future. It can be achieved using today’s technology that combines artificial intelligence for decisioning with case management to carry actions across channels. The result? Lower costs, better margins and best of all happy customers. Telcos can (and should) take action to transform their businesses by investing in technology that enables them to be as digital as possible while eliminating internal silos to ensure customers receive optimal, personalized service at every touch point.
Telcos need to align technology investments with their customers’ needs – this means providing great customer service on any channel at any time. While a complete technology overhaul isn’t always possible, consider smaller steps such as providing a great self-service experience. When customers have a service issue, they want it resolved as fast as possible and dread the hold time that’s often associated with speaking to a live agent. It’s crucial for today’s telcos to provide self-service options that proactively suggest the right action, whether a relevant product to buy or a service action to take.
It is also important to recognize that not all interactions will start and end online. In these cases, it is critical to enable a seamless, continual conversation across channels. For example, if a customer completes three of 10 steps in an online guided troubleshooting process and that same customer calls customer service, the system should guide the agent to resume the interaction in context and not force the customer to start over again at step one. The typical experience today, in which the online experience is disconnected from the live one, is terrible for the customer and results in an unnecessarily long and costly call for the operator. Similarly, if a customer starts but does not complete a sales transaction in a retail store, the ability to go online and complete that transaction drives higher close rates and a superior customer experience.
Learn from other industries that are doing it well
Other industries have seen significant success with technology investments. Financial services, for example, was an early adopter of self-service customer service methods when the first ATM opened for business in 1969. More recently, insurance companies have shifted to conduct a significant portion of their business online so customers can secure quotes, submit claims and purchase policies without a single live agent interaction. It’s time for telcos to adopt similar strategies so that they can more easily meet customer demands across all channels, and ultimately create happier, more loyal customers.
Operationalizing a solid CX strategy can seem like a massive undertaking within today’s reality of steep competition and limited budgets, but it’s actually very attainable with the right approach of prioritizing what customers need and implementing the technology to do so. The end result will be decreased customer churn, more efficient interactions, cost savings and lifelong customers. We’ve evolved as an industry to the point where CX and profitability don’t have to be a zero-sum game, so how will you leverage CX to shape your business in 2017?
Steven Rudolph is VP and business line leader for the communications and media industry at Pegasystems. Rudolph has a long history in the telecommunications industry with more than 15 years of experience in mobile, fixe, and cable, as well as a focus in customer lifecycle management and sales/service operations. Rudolph joined Pega from Outpace Systems, an enterprise software startup focused on marketing and sales automation. Prior to that, he was a partner with McKinsey & Company in the telecommunications, media and technology practice.
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