The four main pillars of the telecoms customer experience
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We all talk about improving the customer experience, but what exactly is it? Teresa Cottam argues that often we’re still not looking at the customer experience from the customer’s point of view.
In 2010 and through into 2011 “customer experience” and “customer experience management” have become real buzz words in the industry.
As someone who champions the customer experience I guess I should be pleased by that, but I have to confess that I’m not. On the one hand understanding that many components contribute to the customer experience is very important. I do not believe in “customer experience silos” where we pay lip service to being customer centric while the vast majority of our business continues in the same old way. However, I also think it’s dangerous to really stretch and bend a term just to market off the back of it – something we have a terrible track record of doing.
The customer experience is far too important an issue for this to happen. Unless we’re able to deliver the type of experience our customers expect then we’ll end up with little or no business – and that is true of both consumer-focused CSPs and those focused on business customers and wholesale.
The problem I have with many companies’ ideas of “customer experience” is that it is still focused on their needs and wants, and not on the needs and wants of their customers. For example, they’re still in the mode of serving up an offer on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. Or they bamboozle customers into long contracts and bundled packages that don’t meet their needs at all, but rather meet the needs of the CSP offering them. Sadly, when I talk to customer focus groups they don’t hate their CSPs but they rarely love them either. Many feel the CSP simply doesn’t listen, doesn’t offer the services they want to buy, or puts blockers in the way of them buying what they do want. The relationship, they tell me, is too focused on contract renewal and customer acquisition and not on maintaining an ongoing relationship.
In order to create a good customer experience the very first step is to understand how the customer perceives that experience. This is created not just from customer service (ie CRM-based), but from all the different touchpoints customers have with the CSP. At Telesperience we believe there are four main pillars to the telecoms customer experience. Each must be optimised by the CSP and then the four need to be co-ordinated to work well together. These four pillars are what the customer perceives. They are supported by – but not defined by – the technologies or processes that deliver them.
We’ve put these pillars together into a handy infographic for you. Feel free to share this and re-use it. Let’s use it as a starting point to discuss how we can truly improve the telecoms customer experience and better meet the needs of our customers. Please note, however, that it’s also important for us to deliver a good customer experience in a profitable manner. It’s perfectly possible just to throw money at customers to keep them happy, but that’s an unwise road to travel down. After all, we’re businesses, not charities. Thus whatever we do should have both a positive customer impact but ultimately should translate into profits for the CSP.
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Great piece, Teresa. When you say “when I talk to customer focus groups they don’t hate their CSPs but they rarely love them either,” my take is that the world will be different for CSPs once customers begin to have options via even more increasing competition via new players/OTTs. Options mean freedom of choice, and as soon as customer become empowered by this sense of control, then things will begin to change a lot more dramatically for CSPs. The more we move toward a connected world, the more CSPs will have to change, not out of their own will, but out of necessity. We are seeing a bit of that in the US via the likes of Netflix, which have educated CSPs about other ways to view TV, for example. Competition is good for customers. CSPs are still set in their own ways, because they still think they control the customer, but the more options, the more customers will feel empowered, and the more they will demand from their CSPs, because they’d feel they can go to other players to fulfill their communications, entertainment wants and needs, they are not trapped. Forgive my non-telecom example, but it’s like being in a bad marriage or a bad job, it’s not that you are happy, but you put up with it, until you have the option to leave and move on… When you feel that sense of control, then the terms of the relationship changes. Now, if CSPs enable that sense of freedom of choice and control for customers, then the relationship between CSP-customer can radically change and then we’d be telling a different story for CSPs. Enabling more control and freedom of choice for customers doesn’t weaken the CSP business. On the contrary, it enables a stronger relationship, and with it happier, more loyal customers. It’s a win-win.
Hi Monica – great comment! I agree the problem is not lack of technology to take the customer experience to the next level, it’s really the mindset. As a customer I’m so bored of lifestyle marketing, bundles that don’t fit, handset-driven approach. I saw a great comment on TV this morning where a commentator pointed out that the Conservative party (the UK government) was losing women voters because they believed that women were only interested in childcare issues and things to do with the family. This woman said – hey women voters are interested in a lot more than that, stop patronising us. This is very much how I feel about CSPs… (Stop offering me pink handsets and bundles with 20,000 texts.) We know CSPs can do better, and some of them are starting to do much better, but it really is time for all of them to “up their game”.
I fully agree, Mrs Cottam. Service Providers are mostly catering their offerings for a small group of people and assume a lot about most consumers. I certainly would never buy a pink handset and I’m not particularly crazy about having an iPhone either, but they can certainly make the handset keys a lot bigger, otherwise it’s hard to type with long nails
Nice article, Teresa. I completely agree that if operators really want to improve the customer experience, they need to focus directly on what customers want and what they perceive as a better experience and service for themselves. Talking about the ‘eat-all-you-can’ plans, these mostly serve the operator’s interest better than the individual consumer’s; however, there is another angel to it that I would like to highlight here.
In US and countries in Europe, operators subsidize handsets as part of their post-paid contract plans, which has greatly helped consumers to be able to get latest smartphones that would have been otherwise difficult to buy given their high upfront costs. I tend to think it is this strategy that has propelled the use of smartphones in the developed countries. If we look at the developing markets, for example, India, prohibitive high costs of smartphones make them out-of-reach of an average middle class consumer. One of the main reasons why iPhone hasn’t become such a rage or why Nokia has been focusing so much on low-cost smartphones because emerging markets are very significant for them. The point I am trying to make here is that contract and bundled packages have proven to be advatageous for the end consumers in some ways already, and if the operators can go one step further and provide more flexibility to the customers to choose the bundles that fit them most, it will be a win-win situation for everybody.
Neena thank you so much for your very interesting comment. I think it’s true that the bundle has delivered high-end handsets to many in Europe and North America. However, the current recession is certainly making consumers re-assess the whole proposition. I also think that, as with eg PCs, the cycle of renewal is changing. The handset was evolving so quickly at one point that people felt the need to have a new one every year; now I know a lot of people who don’t actually want a smartphone, they want a “pretty clever” phone. ie their phones now have capabilities they don’t need or want and which they don’t want to pay for.
To a large extent these people are like the Indian consumers you talk about. They are to some extent price constrained because of the recession, and while they want a nice form factor they now have to think about whether they really need a 10MGP camera rather than a 4MGP, and what the price consequences are of application X or piece of hardware Y. Thus I think the fact Nokia hasn’t forgotten the mid and low end of the market is ultimately a smart move. Apple will not transform the customer experience for most of the world’s customers, because most people cannot afford one. That’s not a criticism of Apple – their whole proposition is one of exclusivity after all – but what about everyone else that can’t afford an iPhone? I therefore see Nokia’s smartphones (and those of other mfrs at the low end) as far more democratising – as they give access to all the wonderful opportunities of the internet and communications to the masses.
I also agree very much with your point about bundles – they worked for a while but what you’re talking about here is the need for a “smarter” strategy – ie the ability to personalise the offer. And on that point I 100% agree with you.
Teresa, allow me to challenge just one tiny point. You said “Apple will not transform the customer experience for most of the world’s customers, because most people cannot afford one.”
I can afford an iPhone, but I simply don’t have one or wanted to have one, at least up until now. I just want a different experience. What I’m trying to say here is this, let’s break a myth, which is that people with certain apparent characteristics would go for an Apple device. Let’s stop making assumptions about consumers. Instead, CSPs should invest in getting to know their customers better. I’ve been working in communications for over 10 years (hopefully that doesn’t make me a complete geek!) and have all the apparent characteristics of a consumer that would want Apple, but I just don’t. My suggestion to CSPs is to realize that they simply need to know their customers better, understand their needs and wants better, and realize that what they think as obvious, actually isn’t. Furthermore, what I want from a CSP is somethng they are still not even offering, and no, it’s not a pink handset.
Hi Monica and thanks for your comment. Okay so you have picked me up here on my lazy use of language! Of course you are right that there are more reasons for not having an iPhone than ability to pay for one. I do think it’s a marketing myth that Apple produces the “best” phones – as “best” depends entirely on what you as an individual need. I also think there’s an enormous market out there for “less smart” phones.
A further point though is to not to fall into the trap of regionalism. While it may be true that on average Western Europe has wealthier consumers who want more high-end or expensive goods, developing countries also have their high-end consumer class now. Likewise Western Europe and the US also have large numbers of poorer people – both in relative and absolute poverty. It irritates me that some classes of phone are built and targetted at “poorer” countries when you know full well there would be a market for them in Europe. Smarter targetting of phones models really is required.
To come back to Neena’s point about bundles – the bundle (which allowed handset subsidy) has been both a blessing and a curse. I for one am ready to be unbundled and I’d prefer to buy my phone directly from the mfr rather than from the CSP.
Teresa, I couldn’t agree more when you say that
customers’ wants and needs should be CSPs’ primary focus. And like you said in
the infographic, it’s important that each pillar be optimized to ensure the
best possible customer experience. But even though you don’t believe in
customer experience silos, do you think one holds more weight than the others
when it comes to influencing the customer experience? I tend to see ‘network
experience’ and CSPs’ ability to assure QoS and measure and analyze each
customer’s QoE as most critical. For example: bit.ly/nH0RlQ
Hi Marc – thanks for your comment. When I say I don’t believe in customer experience silos, what I mean is that typically customer experience is seen as something owned by CRM and that we approach improving the customer experience by eg improving the call centre or improving self-service etc etc. What I’m advocating is that the CSP needs a much more holistic vision of what makes up the customer experience, and they need to approach it more strategically.
The reason I originally wrote this article is that I was becoming increasingly frustrated by the inability of certain staff within CSPs (and commentators such as journalists and analysts) to see that how the network performance is a critical component of the customer experience. I believe that each of the pillars I present is very important in itself, and that we need to ensure that each supports our overarching objective, which is an “optimal” customer experience. Optimal doesn’t mean the best possible, it means that the experience we provide is acceptable to the customer and profitable for the CSP.
I wouldn’t say that the network experience is “the most critical” as you put it, but it’s pretty fundamental. If you don’t get this bit right then no amount of good marketing, good products or offers or customer support is going to make customers want to buy your service. However, it’s important to recognise that what represents a good “network experience” varies from customer to customer and customers need choice. In my view it’s almost a dynamic negotiation between what you want/need and are prepared to pay for, and what is offered/provided.
In reality it’s unlikely that you can optimise everything all at once, but if you start to see the relationship between the different elements you can start to understand your priorities. Where I agree with you whole heartedly is that currently in many countries the focus needs to be on QoS/QoE because due to current conditions (capacity crunch, video, smartphones etc) this is an area that customers are highly conscious of and is differentiating. The sad truth is that no one sees QoS as differentiating when it works well of course, just when it doesn’t work!
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Great article Teresa. As you say, the total customer experience is an amalgam of lots of different things and your ‘pillars of Hercules’, all four of them, is a realy good structure.
Every single product purveyed by a CSP has its own ‘customer journey’, taking it right through the sales-to-cash cycle. A good customer focused design for a new product will look at the complete journey from the customer’s point of view.
Having split the customer experience into smaller components, is there room for some sort of metric system, either self-assessed (probably biased) or assessed by an independent honest broker?
Thank you for your comment Ashley. The sad thing is that many CSPs are building “unbalanced” customer experience houses – they often focus on just one aspect (eg network quality or pricing) at the expense of others. I agree that while we need to optimise each pillar it is critically important that all four work together to create a strong proposition. We’re going to look at this in more detail in upcoming posts. I also agree that this is an area where it’s very hard for a CSP to assess how well they’re doing. Getting an unbiased, unpolitical, objective perspective on your own performance and how it compares to peers is very hard to do internally – not impossible certainly, but hard. (And surely your time is at a premium if you’re a hard-working CSP, whereas this is a task that can be easily and beneficially outsourced.) I think engaging an independent third party to perform an audit and benchmark can be very enlightening, but of course you need to find the right third party that has the experience, approach and insight to give you the feedback you need to improve your performance.
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