It was arguably (and somewhat ironically) a telephone that triggered the need for telco companies to re-evaluate and transform their customer experience and customer service operations.
Back in 2007, the iPhone became a world changer in terms of user experience. Remember getting your first iPhone and reading the instructions? No, neither do I because it was intuitive, and it worked out of the box.
What Apple did for user experience, companies like Amazon are doing for service expectations. We expect higher service now than ever before, and rightly so given the budgets and technologies available to large service providers.
This has meant that telco companies must also up their game and accept that good service has become the baseline for continued success and survival. Companies are talking a lot about customer experience, but few are actually delivering.
From my own experience at driving customer service transformation at MyNetFone Business, telcos need to evolve their thinking around three key areas:
Inject empathy into everything
The actual delivery of telco services is fairly mechanical. Wires need to be connected, apps need to be downloaded, data needs to zoom around the cloud. Consequently, telcos have been fairly “left-brained” when it comes to their employees and culture. However, in order to build a customer-obsessed culture, you need to inject a significant dose of empathy.
I’ve found that our greatest successes are driven by three key fundamentals: controlling expectations, acting with empathy, and empowering our front-line team. The common denominator in these three things is EQ – or emotional intelligence.
People understand that service vans break down, storms take out cables and that sometimes, staff just make mistakes. What they don’t understand is a lack of care about the impact these mistakes can have. This is why, to me, building an empathetic culture is the single most important thing a company can invest in if they want to be a truly service-first business.
Service underscores every business
It is universally accepted that the telco industry is now a utility – a utility that is in the middle of a commodity war. Data is the current weapon of choice with the mantra of ‘more for less’ as we race to unlimited plans. But the problem with cutting prices every three months or so means service providers have to find the money elsewhere in the business – and it is usually service that suffers.
The rising tide of complaints about telcos doesn’t make any business sense to me. When price becomes much of a muchness, the key differentiator for SMEs becomes service.
Good service should be simple
Telcos have to make it easier for customers. For example, the language we use needs to become more approachable and easier to navigate. We are awash with acronyms – NBN, FTTC, VPBX, SIM, 10GB per month, 40Mbs download – does a small-business owner know what most of these are or should they care?
Technology should be invisible, it should be simple and just work. A business owner has enough things to keep them awake at night, let’s not add another source of stress. Once telcos accept that improving their customer experience and service levels make good business sense and that service levels need to be empathetic and uncomplicated, then real progress can be made.
Lee Atkinson, General Manager Small Business and Channel Partners, MyNetFone
