Directly addressing customers’ concerns can enable operators to reduce churn and increase profits – crucial in today’s competitive market . But it is important to understand that Customer Experience Management is not just about the ‘first call resolution’ or the ‘average handling time’
The lesson? listen to your customers!
A great example is T-Mobile Austria, who successfully increased customer satisfaction and effectively reduced churn by listening to their customers. Following an inbound call, an email was sent to customers to gauge their feeling regarding the call and its outcome. A senior manager called back customers who reported an unsatisfactory opinion of the call to discuss and, hopefully, resolve the issue.
This gave customers a sense of importance and perception that their issues were being taken seriously. As a result T-Mobile recorded an 89% change in positive satisfaction, Customers who were leaving or who had expressed an interest in leaving were 20% more likely to extend their contract and most significantly, a 5% reduction in churn.
Listening creates impressive results
This example really shows how listening to your customers can have impressive outcomes, results that are backed up by this chart, which looks at why customers stay and leave.
82% of customers in the US stopped doing business with a company due to poor customer experience – why?
- 73% left as a reaction to rude staff
- 51% due to unknowledgeable staff
63% of customers, however, said they'd return if they received an apology or correction from a supervisor or head office.
How much would that apology or correction really cost? Next to nothing, but the financial benefits of having an established customer stick with you are obvious.
Managing customers in a more individual way, so they remain happy can easily be resolved with additional training. Whilst call centre turnover can be high and there is a need to keep costs low, spending that extra time addressing those points can have huge benefits to your company. It can be [up to] 10 times more
expensive to win a new customer than retain an existing customer.
Addressing these issues and creating a positive experience is crucial, but it’s extremely important that the whole customer experience is frictionless. Proactive CEM is better than reactive CEM. Put yourself in a position where you don't need a senior staff member to call up a disgruntled customer because their experience was exemplary from the start!
In the next part I'll be looking at Social Media and Customer Experience.
You can find part one here
CoralTree Systems is a leading provider of innovative BSS solutions, whose clients include some of the market’s leading communications operators.
You can find out more at our website www.CoralTreeSystems.com
This blog post was written by Craig Maxwell-Brown - Business Development for CoralTree Systmes Ltd.
TMobile Austria Study: Here
Cusotmer Retention Study: Here
