In today’s increasingly connected society, mobile phones have clearly become a necessity, with recent research from Ofcom revealing that in the U.K. alone, 93% of adults own or use a mobile phone. This year, 1.35 billion smartphones are expected to sell globally and 4G subscriber numbers are expected to exceed 10 million by the end of 2015. Clearly, mobile service is an integral part of day-to-day life for the majority of consumers in developed markets, and increasingly so in developing countries. However, the availability of mobile services and number of service providers in each market also means that it is increasingly difficult to compete based on price, making customer service the next battleground for mobile operators.
Currently, consumer demand is putting mobile operators under mounting pressure to innovate to keep up; but the latest research from Astellia on customer service in the mobile space has discovered that they aren’t meeting customer expectations. In fact, our recent survey revealed that 50% of customers are dissatisfied with the level of customer service from their mobile operator. It’s surprising news, and because enabling communications has been vital to mobile operators since the 1990s, surely communicating with their own customers should be second nature?
In truth, the reality couldn’t be more different. Our research shows that there is a huge disparity between customer expectations of their mobile operators and how the mobile operators themselves perceive those expectations. For example, the majority of mobile network operator respondents believe their customers will wait up to one day for network problems to be resolved, and a further 26% believe their customers will wait up to three days. Unfortunately for MNOs, consumer patience is in short supply. Almost two-thirds of consumers want their network-related problems to be solved within an hour and only 28% are prepared to wait up to 24 hours. Despite this customer-imposed one-hour window of opportunity to address all issues, alarmingly, less than 5% of mobile operators are managing to successfully resolve network-related issues during the first call. These types of problems account for one-third of all calls and cover data speeds, voice network coverage and Internet access.
This discrepancy partly explains why only 27% of mobile users are currently classified as a “promoter” of their mobile operator on the net promoter score, while 30% are “passive” and, worryingly, 43% are termed as “detractors.” According to one-third of mobile customers, when dealing with their network-related problems their MNO did not have access to relevant information such as customer usage, network data, quality of experience or even location details. From the MNO perspective, half of respondents believe their contact centers do not have the prerequisite tools to deal with customer problems and 80% believe that their agents spend too much time accessing the correct tools and information to resolve the problem; resulting in 50% of network problems not being resolved during the first call.
It’s less surprising, therefore, that only 36% of mobile consumers cite the experience of dealing with their MNO as improving their loyalty levels. Since the research shows that two-thirds of consumers were left unaffected or had an unsatisfactory experience, it’s clearly more important than ever for MNOs to make an impression when given the chance to deal with customer problems. Mobile users are only one bad experience away from potentially becoming detractors, and in general, a business will only hear from 4% of its dissatisfied customers. It takes 12 positive experiences to make up for one unresolved negative experience which means that MNOs, on the whole, have one chance per annum – they need to make it count.
Nevertheless, until recently customer service levels haven’t been a top priority for network operators. While the mobile industry was still growing rapidly, potential customers were there for the taking and it was quicker and easier, not to mention less expensive, to find a new customer than it was to keep an existing one happy. Now, with markets having become saturated, new customers are scarce on the ground. Whereas customers used to be “won,” they now need to be tempted away from an equally anxious competitor.
In order to achieve this, mobile network operators have previously been able to enter into competitive price wars in a bid to attract new consumers. However, the commodification of voice and data, and the innovative ideas of over-the-top communication services such as Viber and Skype have made this harder to achieve. Having benefited hugely from the nearly ubiquitous Wi-Fi availability increase in the western world, OTT providers’ Wi-Fi calling and messaging services are now an attractive alternative to even the shortest and cheapest data-driven contracts traditional mobile operators are able to offer.
Signaling the beginning of an era in which traditional metrics for customer loyalty will no longer make sense, it’s a wake-up call for many mobile operators. Since winning a new customer is now eight times more expensive than retaining a current user, customer experience to ensure customer loyalty is gaining new importance.
It’s now imperative for MNOs to realize that, when dealing with a customer complaint, every second counts and every effort should be made to sort out the problem as efficiently and rapidly as possible. Dialogues need to be established with customers and awareness and understanding of the problems experienced needs to be shown. Both require MNOs to shift their network-centric organizations to a customer-centric model, a transition that focuses on taking end-to-end ownership of a customer problem and resolving the issue as quickly as possible. MNOs that have moved to a customer-centric model are already reporting a 17% increase in customer satisfaction and a 21% decrease in the number of complaint over a 12-month period.
For the concept to break the traditional silo-based organization, including customer service, marketing, commercial and network operations, everybody needs to be on board. From call center agents to middle management, all the way up to C-suite personnel, it requires a significant mind-set change throughout the entire company, in addition to internal restructuring.
But this transition doesn’t happen overnight. MNOs that have undertaken this customer-centric model evolution claim it takes between 18 and 24 months, and often happens in conjunction with the development of the service operations center. Essentially a centralized structure that allows divisions such as marketing/commercial and network operation to work closely together, the SOC is a relatively recent development overcoming the traditional silos created throughout MNOs and providing different teams with a common solution and metrics.
As well as improving the experience of particular customers, customer data provided by the SOC is now being used to enhance the customer experience and increase first-call resolution; thus enabling MNOs to develop a holistic total customer experience view based on their mobile behavior and usage, location and the impact on mobile network performance.
Research of MNOs from Astellia in 2013 revealed that almost 59% of MNOs had already implemented a SOC, and as a result, two-thirds of MNOs should now have the internal structure to develop a more compelling and efficient customer experience. With 43% of mobile operators wanting to achieve an improved customer experience through increased first-call resolution rates, and 36% wanting to better their NPS scores, there is finally recognition that they need to at least catch up with, if not improve on, customer service norms. At last, good news for the customer.
To download a copy of the whitepaper, please visit http://www.astellia.com/en/Astellia-white-paper-on-customer-care-services.
Cedric Arnaud-Battandier leads Astellia’s marketing department in charge of product management, global solutions management and communication. Arnaud-Battandier was the co-founder of a second screen start-up, which successfully launched the first e-commerce-focused app and the first U.S. kids show synchronized app. Within the telecom industry, Arnaud-Battandier was instrumental in growing a business unit of $150 million into a $450 million powerhouse. He holds an engineering MD from the ENPC Engineering School and an executive degree from the INSEAD Business School.
Editor’s Note: The RCR Wireless News Reality Check section is where C-level executives and advisory firms from across the mobile industry share unique insights and experiences.
