Customer Service - The key differentiator?
For a new prospective mobile customer, trying to choose between the various tier-1 providers, the choice is honestly a difficult one most times. What differentiates one from the other?
Given that for the most part the mobile offerings are standards and stack driven, there is not much that separate’s the service providers (from a consumers view) in terms of offerings – voice is voice, text is text. The main choice is currently driven by product bundles and more recently some exclusive access to handsets. But these are for most part easily replicable or contended with.
However, quality of customer service can be one key aspect that is difficult to duplicate / replicate and a much more personal experience for a customer – and this matters.
Unhappy customers have a negative dissonance effect – so you don’t just risk loosing that one customer – but a few more, who you might never even know about.
All service providers have in recent years been turning their focus to establish a best of breed customer experience, and one that cannot be easily challenged or duplicated by the competition.
The benefits are obvious:
· Reduction in churn
· Reduction in customer service opex
· Differentiating from the the ‘pack’
This is an area to watch and also interesting will be to see how companies evolve strategies linking ‘customer service’ to the larger challenge of ‘customer experience’.
