Want to know more about the challenges and opportunities facing the telecommunications industry? You’ve come to the right place. In this series of blogs, I’m looking at how to simplify services, nurture subscriber relationships, manage leads, and optimise B2B sales. My first blog looked at how unifying the prospect journey can help to boost conversion rates. Here’s how you can leverage intelligent services to retain those customers and boost your Net Promoter Score (NPS).
Adapting to new ways of working
As if dealing with a pandemic wasn’t bad enough, I recently needed to call my insurance provider. I dug out all the paperwork and my heart sank as I dialled, fully expecting to be bounced between departments (now with the added complexity of everyone working from home) and having to explain my query to several different people. Turns out I was wrong. The agent who answered my call knew exactly who I was, which products I had, and sorted my issue quickly and easily. And I’ve been talking about my great experience with them ever since.
Global crisis or not, customers still expect a seamless and consistent omnichannel experience — across an average of 10 different channels. And they’re ready to jump ship to a competitor or leave their service provider a bad review if they don’t get it.
In fact, the lockdown has caused even more pressure on telcos as the world turned to digital channels to stay connected, and customers have been flocking to social channels, web chats, and community platforms looking for answers quickly. But there’s good news — by empowering customer service reps to interact with customers in a way that’s both personable and personalised, you can boost customer loyalty and increase NPS.
High cost to serve and poor customer satisfaction
The telco industry has a churn rate of 22% and an average NPS of 24 — which makes it one of the lowest scoring sectors. When you look behind the scenes, companies are often mired with complex processes and siloed data, which means they lack the visibility and operational efficiency to meet customer needs.
The last thing customers want when they contact customer services is to explain who they are to every person they speak to or to be passed between departments. But without centralised processes and a 360-degree view, it’s unavoidable, and risks disappointing the 75% of customers who expect a personalised, omnichannel experience.
A disjointed approach also drives up the cost to serve, and this environment makes it difficult to leverage customer interactions to cross- or upsell new products and services. As you can imagine, dealing with frustrated customers all day does not make for happy staff, and call centres often have a high staff turnover rate.
Connecting the dots to deliver intelligent service
In my first blog, I talked about how consolidating data across the organisation is the first step to unifying the customer journey. Now I’m going to take that one step further and look at how intelligent service can help you deliver predictive, proactive, and personalised services to customers.
Let’s start with predictive. Machine learning and artificial intelligence have changed the way we think about data. With a central repository of all the data relating to each customer, suddenly we don’t just know who that person is when they call, or the status of their latest order.
With predictive analytics we can really get to know them and anticipate customer behaviour — what does their service plan and activity say about their future needs? There’s no need for agents to spend too long thinking about it because an automated ‘next best action’ prompt can provide service agents with guidance. Then they can proactively cross- and upsell personalised products that will actually add value to the customer.
On the subject of adding value, most telco providers struggle with very low adoption rates for their digital channels and suffer from poor ratings on app stores. Why? Because if they don’t offer comprehensive self-service, their apps just aren’t useful to customers. Bringing self-serve into a high-functioning, seamless, and integrated environment, however, is a game-changer.
Then, customers have the power to update their details, pay bills, increase their data allowance, or order a bundle to use their phone abroad quickly and easily, which can help reduce the number of incoming calls to service centres and therefore costs. You can even use chatbots to guide them to relevant information without increasing pressure on your call centres, but when they do need to call, integrating your telephony system will provide them with an instant connection and nice extra touches like automated transcripts of calls.
Get smarter and build loyalty
Intelligent service means eliminating guesswork for your customers and your staff while resolving issues faster. For example, if there’s a problem that will impact service availability, automated communications and online portals can help to keep customers informed every step of the way, so your team isn’t inundated with calls.
By letting technology do the hard work for you, you can drive loyalty and increase wallet share all while reducing costs. As well as more productive and happier staff, satisfied customers means lower rates of churn, increased NPS ratings, and greater competitive advantage. In fact, your employee and customer experience are so deeply connected that optimising the human element will yield greater benefits for everyone.
Adopting connected and personalised services is the smartest thing telco providers can do to improve the customer experience, and an opportunity not to be missed.
In the next blog, I’ll be looking at how telco providers can boost B2B sales with centralised product catalogues and a 360-degree view of the customer.
Find out more about how Salesforce can help your organisation boost loyalty with more intelligent customer service!
