Telcos deal with complex technology. They also deal with customers by the thousands. It’s the telcos’ ability to keep customers at arms-length from the technology complexity that helps them to win customers. It helps keep the services simple enough for customers to use and love. However, telcos also use complex technology as a mechanism to keep their customers at arms-length from operational staff, for reasons we’ll discuss shortly. It’s this enforced interaction with technology that often displeases customers.
This dichotomy is articulated well by Tom Goodwin in the following, “I will never understand how we spend $500bn in Advertising hoping someone will notice us with advertising, and in the miraculous moment they do, and they care, we take their interest, and outsource it to a bot because no customer is worthy of their staff's time.
I will never understand why the goal of modern marketing is to get as close to customers as possible, and the goal of modern operations and CX is to ensure people are kept as far away as possible from you.”
Cost-effective way of supporting the customer
Telcos clearly know the importance of understanding their customers well. Marketers and Product groups need to know the customers sufficiently well to create compelling solutions that customers want to buy.
However, developing true rapport with customers goes beyond the initial buying process and extends into the usage / consumption part of the customer journey as well. That’s where true customer advocacy is earnt.
Technologies such as chatbots, IVR (Interactive Voice Response) and self-service apps / websites have been invested in heavily by telcos to ensure customers are kept away from operational staff. The answer to Tom’s question above is a simple one (as far as cost allocation is concerned anyway). It’s too expensive for telcos to have operational staff dealing with customers. Tech-based customer interactions tend to cost cents each, whereas people-based customer interactions cost dollars. And when we’re talking about many thousands or millions of interactions per year, seriously large savings can be made by pushing customers towards technology and self-serve solutions.
Know your customer without dealing with him
Telcos are stuck between wanting to know the customer and not wanting to deal with the customer.
CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is the tool that best helps telcos to bridge this divide. CRMs are created to take care of their customers. Not just to care for them, but also to meet them, understand them and develop rapport with them. It’s also the important convergence point where data can be collected and analysed to better understand customers across their entire journeys with the telcos.
SunVizion Billing & CRM provides this convergence of understanding across:
- Customer offer and acquisition
- Customer order capture, onboarding and activation / fulfillment / provisioning
- Customer resource allocation
- Customer usage / consumption
- Customer billing, receipts and revenue assurance
- Customer support and service changes
- Customer service assurance and service performance management
- Customer fall-outs and other detrimental experiences
It puts all this information, collected via manual and automated methods, at the fingertips of operational staff. This includes contact centre staff, providing them with collective insights about each end user’s total experience, helping them to better relate to customers during interactions. It also includes product groups to help better understand customer usage patterns and bottlenecks. It includes marketing groups to understand which products and campaigns are resonating with customers.
This convergence of information provides telcos with the opportunity to better understand their customers, regardless of the level of personalised customer interaction each telco chooses to offer.
If it’s important to you to have better empathy for and understanding of your customers, yet your technology investments are intentionally keeping them at arms-length currently, please book a consultation with SunVizion. Allow us to show you how the SunVizion Billing & CRM solution can help improve customer satisfaction and product performance. This solution is already used by telcos to help them care for over 100 million customers worldwide. See how it can help you meet and know your customers better.
