60% of mobile customers expect their operator to fix network-related problems within one hour, a stark contrast to the majority of telcos, which believe customers are prepared to wait 24 hours.
This is according to a survey carried out by research firm MobileSquared on behalf of subscriber intelligence provider Astellia, which revealed on Tuesday a ra ft of challenges facing telcos when it comes to customer care.
One such challenge is the speed at which customers expect their problem to be diagnosed.
"Two thirds of subscribers want an answer in six minutes," noted Cédric Arnaud-Battandier, CMO of Astellia. Many operators offer three ascending tiers of customer support, he explained to Total Telecom, and if a problem is even slightly difficult to diagnose, it will need to be escalated to level two, then in all likelihood, level three. By then, "you’ve already gone past six minutes."
The longer a subscriber spends on the line to their service provider, the higher the operational cost, and according to Astellia’s research, more than 50% of network-related calls require a call back, driving costs even higher.
"You just need one negative experience to downgrade a customer to a detractor," warned Arnaud-Battandier, and "it takes 12 positives to offset one negative."
However, the challenge for half of the 40 telcos surveyed by Astellia is that they believe their contact centre agents lack the tools needed to deal effectively with customers’ problems. This is not lost on customers either, with a third of the 2,000 subscribers surveyed believing their telco’s customer care agents do not have access to the information needed to solve their problem.
"That’s quite a big problem," Arnaud-Battandier said.
Unsurprisingly, Astellia believes it can help operators address these challenges. Its range of Nova Care solutions taps network data to equip contact centre agents at all tiers with the usage-based subscriber information they need to improve first call resolution (FCR) rates and reduce average handling time (AHT).
Indeed, Astellia customer Zain Bahrain saw a 20%-30% reduction in AHT and a 10%-20% improvement in FCR after deploying Nova Care.
With this information on hand, the operator also knows when a high-value customer is calling and can treat them accordingly.
"If you can show them you already know who they are and the problem they are having…you can transform a negative experience into a positive one," said Arnaud-Battandier.
