There’s an old Irish joke that has someone asking our traditional Hibernian archetype for directions to a nearby town. “Ah now, I wouldn’t start from here,” comes the answer.
Following a Twitter chat I took part in (and you can file that phrase under Words I never thought I’d write) yesterday, I feel a bit like that about mobile operators and customer experience management.
The Twitter chat, organised in a joint effort between analyst house Telesperience, Nokia Siemens Networks and Cerillion, and using the hashtag CSPCX, broadly outlned what the business benefits of customer experience management are, and asked how to achieve them in the communication service provider environment.
For me, the replies showed that the principle barrier to joined-up customer experience management has been cultural. The conversation quickly got into discussions of how to value customers, which customers to value, who to interact with. In short, it got complicated – and I think that mirrors where operators themselves are on this. Yes, there are technical issues, but they are a result of the way operators have developed over the years.
Operators do indeed know that the game is about reducing the cost of customer retention, and reducing the requirement for incessant customer acquisition. To do that they have to think of their customers in different ways. Operators are told they need to develop much deeper understanding of their customers, on a micro segmented level. They must be able not only to pick up on customer issues historically, but predict when a user might be about to encounter a problem and take action. Yet although operators may talk the language of customer experience management, they find it very difficult to act in a customer-centric way. Here’s why I think that could be.
Operators were designed as one to many delivery networks. The model was one of high growth (a landgrab, as it was described to me) and of scaling rapidly. The customer service model wasn’t exactly take it or leave it. It was more take it or leave for one of our competitors, who are all probably much of a muchness in any case. And if you do leave, we’ll find a new customer to replace you, as this mobile thing is going crazy.
Then the business model had to change, as the supply of new customers ran out, and operators in mature markets realised that stealing each other’s customers with cheaper and cheaper deals was no good for anyone. There was also an explosion of what you might call user touchpoints – many more services available, smarter devices, different channels to the user (call centre, text, email, online and paper) and a lot more that could go wrong, or right. Allied to this, customers got a bit more powerful, or at least visibly more powerful.
So the focus shifted to trying to act a bit smarter. What was needed was the ability to display an understanding of what customers required, in service quality and in interactions with the operator, so that customers themselves became advocates for the business. That way, you would spend less on customer acquisition (free handsets, cheap deals), less on customer rentention (more free handsets, more cheap deals) as your customers became, in general, more loyal.
The problem is that operators were told, “To do this you need real time data discovery and analysis on a per-customer basis, not on a per-service level. You need to then turn that data into actionable business intelligence by teams that have the facts at their finger tips, the phone manners of an angel and the business savvy of a Harvard MBA.” (well, perhaps not a Harvard MBA, but you get the point)
Ah. We can’t possibly do all that for all our customers, operators say. It will cost a fortune. Can we perhaps just do it for a few, high value, customers? Sure, came back the experts. But who are your high value customers? Are they the highest revenue generators, the highest margin customers, or the biggest influencers – the mouthy social network types who can amplify perception of your brand for better or worse? We need to deep dive into customer metrics, associate that with social network analysis, provide highly segmented customer profiles for you, so you can respond accordingly with offers and services and perhaps even prioritised service levels. You need to understand micro-segmentation, personalisation, customer self-service and advocacy.
Jeepers, says the operator. This is harder than I thought.
It is hard, isn’t it. Poor you. But there’s more. You need to create, appoint or invent a CEM champion to work horizontally across your business, to turn all of your employees into CEM champions. You need to work holistically, organically, proactively, vertically and horizontally, change your entire working culture. Then you stand a chance.
OK, said the operator. Let me come back to you on that one.
So what’s to be done? Well, gradually, the technical issues can be resolved. The technical issues, where too much data swills around and the data you do want is hard to identify and share, were born as a result of the cultural mindset of the operator. Once the culture changes, then the technology will change too. It’s not easy, it requires a gradual and long term transformation of the OSS and BSS functions, but it can be done. Information can flow more easily around the organisation, and it can be presented in a more meaningful manner to customer service, product management and marketing teams. We can even listen to the customer. We can invest in customer support, and use new (two-way) channels to communicate with the customer.
This can all be done. It’s just that, although operators know where they want to get to, truly they wouldn’t start from here.
Keith Dyer
Editor
Mobile Europe
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LINKS:
http://mobileeurope.co.uk/news/blog/8697-four-reasons-why-operators-should-focus-on-innovation-instead-of-blocking-ip-services
http://mobileeurope.co.uk/news/news-anaylsis/8686-mobile-money-network-looks-to-operators-to-scale-mobile-retail-service
http://mobileeurope.co.uk/news/news-anaylsis/8682-newbay-puts-operators-on-notice-over-notifications
http://mobileeurope.co.uk/news/press-wire/8691-operators-in-western-europe-emerge-from-recession-but-those-in-eastern-europe-continue-to-struggle-says-report
http://mobileeurope.co.uk/news/press-wire/8681-telefonica-and-microsoft-bring-bluevia-to-net-framework-