Improving Customer Service: or how I learned to stop worrying and love outsourcing
Customers and providers alike are discovering that ‘free’ broadband may come at a cost after all.
As of January 2006, the UK was top of the European broadband league, with 9.8 million broadband lines. The recent emergence of triple (phone, broadband and digital TV) and quad play offers (phone, broadband, digital TV and mobile) plus the inevitable slew of copycat ‘free’ broadband has given the market another boost of acceleration. Providers rushing to grab a slice of this action, must tread carefully as the experience of one provider amply demonstrates.
In April of this year, Talk Talk launched its ‘free broadband forever’ offer. Recent figures state that approximately 100,000 of the 500,000 people who stuck with the service since its launch have yet to be connected. Needless to say many of those are less than complimentary about the brand.
So how do providers ensure that the customers they attract are well looked after and stay with the service? Especially when historically they’ve focused on keeping the network running rather than delivering customer service.
Delivering customer service through outsourcing
Traditionally, outsourcing has not been viewed as the ideal solution for customer service because organisations have been concerned about brand consistency once calls leave the building. But what if the chosen organisation had more than ten years’ specialist experience?
Carole Bayliss, Operational Service Director, Fujitsu says: “There’s been a fundamental shift in the broadband market. Cost of service support is a financial headache for all ISPs but there is now a realisation that low-cost support driving low quality has even greater financial implications. People are understanding that agent knowledge is king.”
Fujitsu was called in to run the help desk for a major high-street supermarket and immediately set about making some changes. Carole says: “Key to the success of any service support is understanding the customers’ needs, identifying quickly the root cause of the problem and putting it right first time.
"We analyse everything our customers tell us, leaving no stone unturned. Our approach enables us to see how many times customers have called about a particular issue and achieve a level of detail that’s unique in this industry. Our objective is prevention rather than cure, it’s about stopping calls rather than getting rid of them quickly.
“Our people are the key to this strategy, good training both from a technical and soft skills perspective is critical, coupled with listening to our agents, providing them with the forum to highlight areas that are creating customer frustration and recommending solutions.”
One product of this information gathering has been the introduction of a customer retention team. Carole says: “We find out why the customer wants to leave and re-sell the benefits of the service, offering compelling reasons to stay.” It seems to work too. The initiative has delivered a retention rate of 50% plus. For customers to be considered as as retained business however, they must stay on for a minimum of 90 days.
Gaining loyalty through innovative services
With so many operators to choose from, providers need to ensure they are solving customer issues quickly and effectively. Carole says: “We’re extremely innovative in customer service and constantly develop new toolsets to improve our offering.”
These tools include Inquiero, First-time Fix Database and Super Mails. Inquiero enables staff to take control of the customer’s PC remotely and fix the problem. That way the customer can just sit back and watch as the problem gets solved rather than having to navigate their PC through verbal instruction.
Many customers are beginning to see that these kinds of services add significant value and are willing to pay for them. This helps to build brand loyalty that will aid providers in reducing churn in a competitive market. Focus has shifted from just wanting to drive high subscriber numbers with no consideration for ongoing support, to realising the importance of extremely high levels of customer service.
This means that in the future although customer numbers will grow, the number of vendors will shrink due to market fall out or consolidation.
The driving force behind this fall out will undoubtedly be the ability to deliver the high levels of customer service now expected. If providers are to stay in the game, they need to ask themselves if they have the experience and ability to keep all those new customers happy. And if not, they need to take action now.
