It is rightly said that “It takes months to find a customer and only seconds to lose one”. In today’s digital era, all products and services should be ‘Served’ keeping the customer at the centre of the product offering. Telco customers are no different, they want the access to operator’s services at a time and location convenient to them. Moreover, the increasing complexity in devices and plans with multiple payment options has put pressure on Telco’s to offer physical and digital channels to their customers to research, compare, buy and renew Telco services. Today’s consumer has access to both digital and non-digital touch points. No matter what channels they prefer to communicate with the Telco, they must have continuity in the conversation they have with their service provider. Hence, convergence of offline and online channels for every customer touch points is one of the key differentiations for Telcos to leverage, which, the omni-channel customer care strategy has to offer. As per the study done by Gartner, to ensure competitive edge in the highly competitive world of service excellence, organizations are shifting to a new battlefield, ensuring an Omni Channel customer experience in the highly competitive world of customer service excellence Customer Touch Points for Telco’s could be:

• Operator Store
• Call Centre
• Website/E-commerce
• IVR
• Social Media/OTT
• Mobile Self Care/Mobile Commerce

The traditional point of sale or physical stores has evolved to become experience zones for customers. The highly trained staff can give customer in depth demo of products and services for superior customer experience. Call Centers are a great tool to cross and up sell products to increase ARPU by handling customer complaints effectively and offering them to upgrade their services. E-commerce or Operator website is one of the most powerful tool, which is primarily used as a source of information for customers. However when the same website is bundled with online buying option, the tool even becomes more powerful and eventually becomes a great contributor for operators revenue. Automated IVR helps Telco’s to promote their products and services without human intervention. It not only provides useful information to customers but it also connects the customer to the call centre agent if he is willing to buy Telco services. Social Media and proliferation of OTT players has taken the world by storm. Today’s ever connected customers use Facebook, WhatsApp, Skype to interact with Telcos. They should ensure that customers not only get a prompt response to their queries but they also get a similar experience they would have got at the time of visiting a store or calling the customer call centre. Mobile Self Care or M-Commerce is no longer about shopping online through a mobile phone, indeed it is emerging as one of the most important tool which can actively increase customer experience. The Mobile Self Care app gives complete control to the customer on which products to buy, when they want to buy and from where they want to buy. Benefits of Omni-Channel Customer Care

• Customers can access to CSPs products and services 24/7 from any location
• Increase business volume without increasing staff or cost through digital channels
• Higher client retention ratio and satisfaction index
• Higher customer reach
• Raises brand awareness & sales
• Offering a single view of your customer across all channels

CSPs can take a giant leap forward in comparison to their competition as they build an exciting new level of Customer Xperience through omni-channel customer care strategy.  

ensuring anOmni Channel customer experiencein the highly competitive world of customer service excellence