Competition in the telecom industry is fierce as more competitors enter an increasingly saturated market. Telecom service providers not only have to battle to acquire customers, but they also face pricing wars that make customer retention a challenge.
So, how can you reduce the risk of customer attrition? Below, we go over why your telecom customer retention rate matters, what a good customer retention rate looks like and steps you can take to improve it.
Why does customer retention matter in the telecom industry?
The importance of customer retention can’t be understated for telecom providers. Here are a few of the potential dangers businesses face if with lower attrition:
- Increased business expenses
- Potentially leaving money on the table
- It’s easier than ever to switch
Let’s dive into each of these a little further.
Increased business expenses
If your company struggles to retain the customers you’ve acquired, you’ll likely have to spend more on customer acquisition, which will negatively impact your profitability. That’s because it costs up to seven times more to acquire new customers than to retain your current customer base.
In short, not prioritizing customer retention could mean your business is hemorrhaging money. In fact, research shows that annually, U.S. businesses could save more than $35 million if they prioritized retention.
Potentially leaving money on the table
If your company can successfully improve retention to save money it’d otherwise spend on acquisition, you could also see a boost in your bottom line.
You don’t need to have a dramatic increase in retention to move the needle, either. Research by Bain & Company shows that a mere five percent boost in retention can increase profits by up to 95%. This means that prioritizing customer retention can play a huge role in the success of your telecom business.
It’s easier than ever for customers to switch
Customers have endless choices for telecom providers in an increasingly saturated market. Now, many competitors streamline the process by letting customers keep their current device and phone number.
That’s why it’s important to focus on improving retention by creating a positive customer service experience. If you fail to meet their expectations, customers aren’t giving you second chances. Nine out of 10 customers leave after a single bad service experience. This means that customer support and retention are critical to maintaining a competitive edge in a crowded market.
What is a good telecom customer retention rate?
So, what’s a good customer retention rate for telecom companies? In general, the average customer retention rate for the telecom industry is 78%. With this figure in mind, you can gauge how your company compares to the industry standard and start implementing a plan to improve it.
How can businesses improve telecom customer retention rate?
Now that you know why customer retention matters for your business, how can you improve it? Here are a few tips to consider when creating a plan to improve your telecom customer retention rate:
- Offer robust self-service options
- Implement an omnichannel customer service strategy
- Empower agents with better support tools
We dive into each of these in more detail below.
Offer robust self-service options
There’s no doubt that self-service is critical for telecom customer support. It’s critical to helping customers get a fast resolution to service requests.
This is why self-service is no longer a nice-to-have, but a must-have for telecom providers. Nearly nine out of 10 customers expect businesses to provide automated support. Yet, many businesses aren’t seizing the opportunity self-service provides. In fact, a survey by Gartner found that only 14% of support requests are resolved by using only automated support tools.
A lack of robust self-service tools, such as interactive tutorials, can hurt your customer retention efforts and business growth. If your self-service options don’t help customers independently and quickly resolve a product or service issue, you risk increased churn and customer rage.
Instead, companies looking to stand out from competitors and boost retention should leverage self-service to create a better customer experience. Ensuring you have self-service tutorials optimized for learning and that are up to date can help your customers get instant, accurate support and skip the call center queue.
This, in turn, helps improve retention since two-thirds of customers expect businesses to respond to their communications in five minutes or less. By optimizing your self-serve tools, you can provide speedy resolutions that help customers get back to using and enjoying their devices quickly.
Implement an omnichannel customer service strategy
Omnichannel customer service is critical for fostering brand trust, which in turn drives customer retention. In fact, research by Qualtrics names good customer service as one of the top 10 factors for driving brand trust.
So, how can your customer service help facilitate stronger relationships with customers? Omnichannel customer service can help foster brand trust by using a single platform to ensure consistency across channels such as SMS, email, and over the phone. It then comes as no surprise that customers who trust a brand are more likely to stay loyal to the company. Nearly three-fourths of customers say they’d spend less with a brand that lost their trust. This means that if your company can improve trust with customers, you can improve retention and potentially decrease churn.
Omnichannel support can be a critical tool for fostering trust by ensuring your customers can access the same consistent, reliable answers across all touchpoints and channels. This can eliminate friction and prevent siloes, helping strengthen the customer relationship and reducing the risk of attrition.
Empower agents with better support tools
Your agents play a critical role in boosting your telecom customer retention rate. With the right tools, contact center agents can improve retention by providing fast and reliable answers to customers’ questions.
However, the quality of the customer service your agents provide depends on the quality of the resources they have to use. Tools like virtualization or live video support can be critical for speedy, accurate diagnosis and troubleshooting. This can help streamline the customer support experience, which can help improve customer retention.
TELUS knows firsthand the importance of equipping agents with the right tools. Like many telecom service providers, it relied on physical devices to guide agents through service interactions. However, physical devices are expensive to maintain and can quickly become outdated. This can make it difficult for agents to provide the fast, reliable support experiences that customers expect.
TELUS decided to use a tech support solution (in this case, the Ozmo Platform) with tools like virtualization, so that agents could simulate not only the device in question but also the exact version the customer had. This helped them create a more personalized customer service experience as well as diagnose and troubleshoot quickly and effectively.
As a result, agent confidence improved by 80% and the company saw 750,000 annual resolutions. Equipping agents with the right tools in their tech stack can help eliminate friction in the customer experience, which in turn can help reduce the risk of customer attrition.
Ensure you have the right tools to improve your telecom customer retention rate
Improving your telecom customer retention rate isn’t just a matter of having the right loyalty program; it’s also about having the right tools. Ensuring you have robust self-service options, implementing an omnichannel customer support strategy and using technology such as virtualized tech support can help reduce friction and customer attrition.
Companies that can successfully boost retention can potentially enjoy benefits such as improved profitability and lower business expenses. This can make CX technology a critical piece of the retention puzzle for telecom providers. Telecom service providers looking to improve customer retention and reduce churn should evaluate the efficacy of their current tech stack and identify any gaps. By following the tips outlined here, you can start strategizing to create a more seamless customer experience.
Are you looking to learn more about the benefits of customer service for your telecom company? Learn how Verizon uses the Ozmo platform to save tens of millions of dollars annually. Download the case study today.
