One of the more interesting pieces of news to come out of the Broadband World Forum in Paris this week was the statement from Telefonica de Argentina that it aims to turn customer care into a revenue-generating, value-added service by offering its customers in-depth advice at a premium.
As reported in Total Telecom, the operator already provides a premium customer support service to its broadband customers called ‘Dr Speedy’. However, Telefonica de Argentina wants to go further.
Jose Luis Caresani, head of management and provision of broadband services at Telefonica de Argentina, said during a panel session that as well as troubleshooting problems, a customer service representative could, for instance, offer advice on connecting new devices such as a printer to a home network.
“We want to change the relationship we have with our customers,” said Jose Luis Caresani, head of management and provision of broadband services at Telefonica de Argentina, “we want to become a bigger part of our customers’ digital lives.â€
Apparently, Alcatel-Lucent agrees with the sentiment that customers are willing to pay because Ben Geller, senior director of product marketing at Alcatel-Lucent, said so during the same panel session. I’m not sure how Alcatel-Lucent came to this conclusion. Perhaps Ben’s company is hoping to do more business with Telefonica de Argentina? However, in the rest of the world this would be a very hard sell, indeed.
The concept of paying for customer care from a CSP would probably be a driver for churn for most consumers. I understand that the comments were made with regard to ‘enhanced’ customer service for help with devices and connection issues, etc. but the majority of calls to customer care centers are still around billing, service failure and poor connectivity – and no-one is going to pay for that help. It’s a romantic concept that CSP CSRs will have the depth of knowledge to help with technical issues, and it will more likely be a hand-off to another person if this help is needed during a call, with more waiting on the call to boot.
The conversation would go something like this: “No sir, there was no mistake with your bill, you did actually use 56Gb of data on your iPhone last month exceeding your cap by $2,000 worth of usage. Would you like me to pass you over to our technical CSR to explain how to make the settings on your phone to prevent this happening again? No problem, that help will cost you $1 per minute, would you like to proceed?â€
I know that some people do pay for technical assistance when buying software or hardware, but they have been trained to expect FREE customer care from CSPs for the last hundred years. We are just coming to grips with online customer care, and if CSPs would like to be part of their customers “digital lives,†getting that right would be a good cost-saving start. The benefits of avoiding the dreaded phone call to support centers would also help the bottom line considerably.
It’s going to take operators with guts to start the ball rolling and it will take a long time to gain acceptance. Who will be the first, Telefonica de Argentina? I doubt it.
This is an interesting topic! let me provide my perspective on this–
If you look at it, it is surprising that Customer Care could be a revenue generator option.
If you look at it– for a normal stand point this may not look beneficial for the telcos at all. But I tried to think about it from the perspective of a n-sided business model where the telcos would serve as ‘The Backbone’ for a multitude of offerings that are provided to the subscribers. True that if angry customers call up customer care, and are asked to pay there is a probability of churn– but probably there is also a large set of customers who could be made aware of the latest and greatest of offerings that they could avail of (from the companies who are participants in this n-sided business model) which in turn would help customers get the best in class service offering, aided by guidance from the customer care agent, and also allow the companies make money out of the transactions. In such a scenario, every transaction over the phone that the agent makes (or even speaks and thus advertises) with the customer could be a chargeable event for which the particular company pays the telco a charge similar to ‘advertisement’ charges. If the subscriber agrees to opt for the service after a successful persuasion by the customer care agent, the telco would not only gain from the call charge from the customer, but could potentially gain from the participating firm as a royalty for enabling business development for the company.
In such scenarios, the customer care agent really has to ‘act’ as the person taking “Care” of the customer.
This is not new, Having worked in ‘outsourced’ customer care departments for some other companies (primarily computer and hardware) I have seen customers’ mood swinging from irritated to understanding to finally happy. Some companies like HP even sell through regular customer care agents. (Agents get incentives for successful sales).So a lot actually depends on the ability of the customer care agent. Typically in these scenarios the agent needs to be able to ‘connect’ to the customer– that is a key element.
Similarly for telcos. If we look at a future of telecom consolidation, customer care could possibly one of revenue generating sources. Of course the telco would have to provide support to enable that ‘customers actually get benefits’ out of such service. Else, as you rightly say, churn is big possibility.
Last but not the least, in such scenarios, it is probably advisable to the telcos not to use AHT (Average call handling Time) as a metric of performance for the customer care agent. Typically for the AHT a customer care executive tends to undermine the real need of fulfilling the customers’ needs. Instead of AHT, the metric should always be targeted to estimate the ‘effort spent’ ‘BY’ the ‘customer’ in resolving the issue. This creates a case for creating satisfaction within the customers by lowering the pains of the ‘customer’.
In my personal blog on revenue assurance I had made a similar post (You can find it at: http://moinakbanerjee.blogspot.com/2010/05/is-vodafone-changing-game-plans-wont_09.html)
There is customer care “as we know it” and then there is this “taking-care-of-th- customer” as Moinak puts it. It sounds to me as if this souped-up model is about business taking care of itself using avenues that the customer is using to seek care. The symbiosis of the whole arrangement is unclear to me. Not to be too simplistic, but I think if I call my CSP expecting my problems to be resolved, the last thing I want to have is some sales pitch. The very fact that I have to call CSP is annoying enough. Why not just do a dedicated outbound call centre that can use data mining to determine customer needs as recorded from the calls from subs and then target people who might be interested? CRM information can show which subs would be receptive to particular propositions. Assume I am a customer who called yesterday and complained about a particular handset that just does not seem to serve my needs. If you call me up next week with a subsidized offer on a handset that does precisely what I want at a “great†price, I may listen to you.
(Maybe related to this, I work for a CSP, which offers money transfer services and we do charge customers 1 shilling to check the balance on their e-money account. Customers are fine with this – I mean, even banks charge you up to 25 shillings to check your funds balance at the ATM. But what about charging subs when they check their prepay airtime balance? At some point we looked at the number of airtime balance enquiries that the network serves and they are many. Most of our prepay subs do a balance enquiry before the call, then make the call and at the end of the call, they perform another enquiry – I suppose they are paranoid about overcharges. Anyway it seemed to us that we could increase our revenue by charging for airtime balance enquiries. We have however not summoned enough courage to do it!)
We have also toyed at some point with providing prioritized service to subs who then pay a nominal fee per month to enjoy “premium†customer care, which makes you wonder what will happen if every subs wants this? We would then have to differentiate further and raise the premium I guess so that we have premium customer care and …ultra-premium and …super-premium…. I wonder what the regulator would make of this whole thing?