Jerry has been helping his ill father to manage his mobile bills. In the month of March Jerry’s father was wrongly billed for a service which he did not subscribe. To get the charges reversed, Jerry called operators customer care. He had to wait for 3 minutes and listen to promotional IVRs to connect to the agent. Once connected, the agent insisted on speaking with his father. After convincing of his father’s illness for more than a minute the agent agreed to assist jerry and the charges were reversed. The agent then suggested a couple of new plans that would benefit his father to reduce his monthly mobile bill. A plan was agreed upon and the transaction completed. The agent informed Jerry that the new services would be activated within 48 hours, which further added to jerry’s frustration. The entire process took more than 8 minutes where jerry’s experience was not so pleasant.
Jerry’s example is just one of a case; there is a dire need on ground from both operators and customers to improve on customer engagement through digital channels to cater to the exponential growth of smartphone users. According to SpeechCycle and Echo Research Study, 50% of the Smartphone users want to have the ability to resolve their issue on a smart phone app rather than call into a customer contact center. This is why an Interactive Mobile Self Care App with real time service activation is fast gaining popularity that can take customer experience to the next level. One of the primary functions of Mobile Self Care App is enabling the customer to subscribe for new plans and offer a personalized experience for the customers. It allows subscriber to access, manage and configure plans or services from anywhere from any device, which helps in cross-sell and up-sell and helps reduce congestion on customer support, resulting in a win-win situation.
Quick Facts
- A CSP in North America stated that mobile self-service has been “growing by leaps and bounds”, and that it helped reduce the number of transactions that otherwise would have given rise to calls to customer care.
- A CSP in the Middle East stated that “the number of transactions via the self-service channels increased by 7% over a year”
- A European CSP has seen 20% reduction in the number of calls to the customer centre over 18 months
- Another operator in North America reported more than 18% ARPU uplift since it implemented an optimized self-ordering capability on its self-service interface.
Source: Analysis Mason
If we again revisit Jerry’s example where the operator had provided him with a Mobile self-care app, at the first place his father himself would be able to resolve his problem. Moreover, the call to the customer care and the wait time to connect to the agent could have been eliminated. The problem of excess bill could be addressed through the live chat feature and plans can be subscribed in real time with quick activation. The entire process would take less than 4 minutes thereby offering a superior customer engagement experience, also reducing the need for customer care personnel to answer the calls. For more details click here
