Eliminate friction now to drive telco loyalty, cut costs

The future of telco belongs to providers that jump on this moment to set themselves apart through empathetic and effective customer experiences.

The future of telco belongs to providers that jump on this moment to set themselves apart through empathetic and effective customer experiences. The days of differentiating around product and price alone are over. If you’re a player looking to thrive for the long term, eliminating friction for your customers can be a powerful lever, one that’s capable of increasing their loyalty and reducing operating costs that might otherwise hurt your bottom line.

Telcos that address friction consistently improve experiences

Your customers have never relied more heavily on mobile and WiFi to work, live, learn and connect. In our EY Digital Home Survey, some 50% of Canadians said their internet connectivity requirements increased during the pandemic. At the same time, 35% have realized it’s best to centralize connectivity and content needs with a single supplier. Even so, nearly one-fifth admitted to being dissatisfied with the customer support they currently receive — and that’s an opportunity.

Cementing loyalty now means ensuring customers recognize the value of services you provide at every interaction, from initial sale and advice around new services, to problem resolution and getting the latest mobile phone or smart home devices. Many providers have invested heavily in this direction already. Still, the right strategy for the next leg of the race requires telcos to double down and become even more effective across these areas now.

Asking these three questions today can help turn the tide from pricing-based customer engagement and seasonal offers to one spurred by loyalty and strategic recommendations:

1.  Are we empathizing with the problems customers and employees want us to address?

The way people — your customers and your own employees — experience your brand isn’t a one-time thing. It is the cumulative result of many interactions throughout their journey with you. Top talent is tough to recruit and even tougher to retain. A culture grounded in empathy can set you apart with both those audiences.

Making that shift begins by putting humans at the centre of everything you do as an organization. Dive deep to understand what customers and employees are struggling with. Shift the narrative through internal training on empathy, conflict resolution and active listening. Embrace every internal and external interaction as a brand-building opportunity.

What is your customer’s point of view? What feeds frustration in the market, and within your workforce? Positive customer experiences build trust with those you’re serving so they never have a reason to seek out another provider. That has an important spillover effect to your own people, reducing friction for front-line teams working to solve customer issues. 

2.  Can we expand our capabilities to provide next-level customer experiences?

Great customer interactions shouldn’t feel transactional. By putting humans at the centre of our work, and building the right processes and tech capabilities, we can deliver holistic experiences that are laser focused on what customers need and want now.

Identify opportunities to create more seamless handoffs within and between teams. This positions you to standardize processes and ultimately drive a more optimal and effective customer experience. Then, deploy specific technologies to build out necessary capabilities that can help you meet and exceed those customer expectations.

3. Can we use data proactively to identify customer insights, issues and future opportunities?

When you’ve got the right information, you can unlock telling visibility into the reasons why customers call or browse, the problems they face most often, their intentions and a wealth of equally important intel. With the right capabilities in place, you can transform that data into valuable insights, better operations, smarter sales and compelling experiences now and down the road.

Proactively analyzing WiFi quality and speed for existing customers can bolster sales conversations with important insight. The right data-mining tools empower customer service teams with the ability to spot trouble quickly and reach out to customers before they call to complain. Using the predictive capabilities of machine learning or artificial intelligence allows you to get ahead of customer needs and proactively offer solutions. Always-on analytics allow you to personalize customer experiences by giving you a head’s up on what services or solutions they are likely to need next.

How strong is your data collection capability now? Are you doing enough to translate the data you have into strategies, offerings and conversations that could improve the customer experience?

Employing data-driven tools like process mining can help you stay ahead of evolving customer needs. Use it to inform next steps, assess what’s working, and correct course along the way. Translate stats and numbers into customer experiences that resonate.

How do telcos move forward from here?

Transforming your customer experience doesn’t have to mean boiling the ocean all at once. Start evolving the customer experience by employing empathy broadly, unleashing technology strategically and mining data proactively. Once you do, opportunities to scale those efforts will emerge organically. This generates brand loyalty to support growth, builds results and fosters continuous innovation. Investing more in customer experience now can open your organization up to those possibilities sooner.