Throughout the world, wireless providers tend to suffer from a common myopia: Too many carriers see their customer care operations as a simple safety net for agitated customers. While this misperception currently dominates the vision of almost all wireless players, it is both wrong and dangerous.
Customer care is not a safety net. Effective customer care operations should be seen as the place in which customer relationships are deepened and sealed-not simply salvaged until the next call.
The key to developing customer care operations that work is to build them around one overriding philosophy. If you build relationships with customers, you have given them a reason not to churn.
How do we help our customer care operations focus their energies on building a base of loyal subscribers instead of constantly apologizing to an army of angry customers? Customer care operations will only improve when they are thought of as tools to broaden and enhance relationships with customers. Three specific tasks must be undertaken:
Customer care software needs to become flexible enough to collect customer-specific lifestyle information. In addition to normal household data (income, number of occupants and number of cars driven), a service provider should know the hobbies and interests of every customer. Each time a customer calls, after resolving the issue at hand, an attendant should ask a few simple questions designed by the carrier’s marketing group to gather this information.
In addition, each customer care representative needs to have a “retention tool kit.” This kit should include customer-specific incentives. Each incentive should apply to a number of customers with similar affinities but should appear to the customer to be tailored to their own interests. These are the things a customer care representative can give the customer as a way of saying “Thank you” or “I am sorry for the inconvenience.”
For example, if your database indicates a customer is an avid golfer, the customer care attendant should have a sleeve of golf balls in his or her tool kit. The tool kit only works when it contains tailored items for a wide variety of customers.
You do not want to say “I am sorry” to a US$400-per-month customer in the same way you do a US$30-per-month customer. Business people and teen-agers should be treated differently.
Finally, marketing and customer care departments need to be taught to work together on customer care. A carrier’s marketing organization and customer care organization must be motivated to work as a team, and their compensation needs to be partially tied to customer satisfaction and churn-reduction objectives. Marketing departments should provide excellent analysis, and customer care operations should provide excellent data. Information technology departments and systems and customer care training departments should also be involved in this circle.
This principle is foundational to any market: If you build relationships with customers, you have given them a reason not to churn.
Hunt Eggleston (he@technology-trends.com) is a customer relationship management consultant with experience in wireless with U.S.-based Technology Trends.
