Telecom providers can’t afford to ignore the end-to-end customer experience. Creating positive customer experiences is critical for increasing customer lifetime value (CLV) and standing out from the increasing number of MVNOs and MVNEs entering an already saturated market.
Below, we go over what an end-to-end customer experience is for telecom companies, key components and strategies to deliver streamlined customer support across the lifecycle.
What is end-to-end customer experience in telecom?
Generally, end-to-end customer experience refers to all customer interactions across the lifecycle. Customer experience is mission-critical to the success of telecom brands. After all, service reliability is essential, as poor customer experience directly correlates with customer churn rates.
Yet, many telecom providers aren’t providing the experience customers crave. According to the National Customer Rage survey, customers overwhelmingly cited the telecom industry as one of the top 10 industries where they experienced their most serious problem. In an industry where quality customer experiences matter, a poor customer service experience can have a devastating impact on your brand.
Why the end-to-end customer experience matters
Customers aren’t willing to give second chances to businesses that fail to meet their expectations. 63% of customers will leave a brand due to poor customer service.
Even more alarmingly, nine out of 10 customers don’t complain; they simply stop doing business with you. That means you can’t rely on total complaints to understand how your business is performing or predict who will churn. All of this can have a devastating impact on a business’s bottom line. Poor customer experiences cost businesses around the globe $3.7 trillion each year.
That’s one of the reasons why prioritizing the end-to-end customer experience is crucial for telecom brands. However, it’s not just about stopping current customers from leaving. Companies that create a positive end-to-end customer experience can tap into new revenue opportunities. Three-fourths of customers will spend more with businesses that provide positive customer support experiences. By prioritizing customer service, you can turn your contact center into a revenue driver for your business.
The key components of a strong end-to-end customer experience
So, how can you provide the best customer experience in telecom? Here are a few critical components of positive end-to-end customer support.
Customer acquisition and onboarding
Improving the customer onboarding process is crucial to delivering a seamless, end-to-end customer experience. The onboarding process sets the tone for your relationship with the customer, so it’s essential that it goes well. You want to ensure that onboarding is quick and easy. Research shows that if onboarding takes more than 20 minutes, seven out of 10 customers will abandon the process. In other words, customer onboarding is an integral part of creating a customer retention strategy that works.
So, what can you do to ensure a smooth onboarding process for your customers? One way to do so is to leverage self-service onboarding. Self-service onboarding can drive digital adoption and boost your customer retention rate. Self-service allows customers to get up and running quickly from home, without having to wait to speak to an agent or drive to one of your stores.
To streamline the onboarding process, consider using interactive tutorials. One of the many benefits of interactive tutorials is that they’re optimized for learning. Research shows people retain over 90% of a critical message from video, but will only retain 10% of that same message by reading text. Self-serve onboarding that’s optimized for learning can ensure a smooth onboarding process and reduce support calls to your contact center.
Everyday service and proactive support
Customers expect smooth, uninterrupted connectivity with their smartphones or other devices. 93% of American adults say a disruption in their telecom service would be a problem for their daily life. Telecom customers want a reliable connection to services at all times.
However, outages can happen to even the top MVNOs or MVNEs for telecom support. So, what can you do to keep customers happy and make them less likely to leave? You’ll want to ensure you implement proactive customer service as part of your support strategy.
What is proactive customer support? Proactive customer service refers to companies anticipating potential problems before they arise and coming up with resolutions before the customer needs to ask for help.
For example, a telecom provider might encourage customers to use self-support tools during network disruptions to ensure they can get the help they need even when phone lines are down. Or, it could mean leveraging personalized customer service to provide an even more tailored and accurate tech support experience.
The key to proactive customer support is to anticipate and address potential challenges before they actually happen. This is crucial for delivering frictionless customer service throughout the customer lifecycle and providing a seamless end-to-end customer experience.
Strategies to deliver a strong end-to-end customer experience in telecom
Now that you know the critical components of a good end-to-end experience, how can you make sure your contact center delivers? Below are a few tips you can implement to improve your company’s tech support.
Leverage a comprehensive customer support platform
Comprehensive, or omnichannel, customer service refers to a consistent, streamlined customer experience across all channels and touchpoints. Both customers and agents can access the same, reliable information whether they reach out over the phone, via SMS or email.
Omnichannel support shouldn’t be confused with multichannel, which is often siloed and inconsistent. Omnichannel ensures a unified approach, no matter the customer’s preferred platform.
Omnichannel customer service is critical in telecom, especially for MVNEs that want to drive retention and revenue. Research by McKinsey shows omnichannel experiences are essential for generating more revenue from B2B customers. Embracing omnichannel customer service can help MVNEs and other telecom providers stand out in an increasingly crowded market.
Implement customer self-service tools
Most companies don’t realize that self-service is key to a better customer experience. Customers want to have the option to troubleshoot issues themselves. In fact, 88% of customers expect you to provide self-service options.
There are many benefits of using chatbots and other self-service tools for both customers and your business. Conversational AI chatbots enable customers to bypass lengthy call queues and receive instant technical support.
Additionally, chatbots aren’t just for frequently asked questions or simple tasks anymore. Thanks to advancements in technology such as large language models (LLMs), chatbots can more easily understand the nuance behind customer requests. Customers may use multiple words to describe the same thing, and LLMs understand that. This new generation of chatbots also uses more natural language instead of stiff, pre-scripted answers, creating a better experience for customers.
Use a unified knowledge base
When customers are experiencing an issue with their network or device, they want resolutions fast. That’s why it’s important to have a strong self-service knowledge base that works.
Traditional, static knowledge bases such as FAQ pages can’t keep pace with customer demands for fast tech support. Plus, with multiple software updates for smartphones and devices every year, these manuals can quickly become outdated.
A strong self-service knowledge base should update dynamically to ensure both customers and agents can access reliable information for troubleshooting and support. This can help improve key contact center metrics and increase customer loyalty.
So what makes a good knowledge base? If you’re looking for a self-service knowledge base for your business, some features to keep in mind include:
- WCAG 2.0 compliance to ensure accessibility for all customers and agents
- Multilingual self-service options
- Interactive tutorials that are optimized for learning
- Scalable and customizable tech support
- AI customer service tools
The quality of your knowledge base directly relates to the quality of your end-to-end customer support. Ensuring your customers always have access to reliable information is essential for telecom customer support.
End-to-end CX is a competitive edge for telecom providers
Telecom is becoming increasingly saturated as more MVNOs and other providers jump into the market to compete for customers. Customer service is a key differentiator for telecom companies looking to stand out from the competition. By ensuring customers have quality service experiences across the customer lifecycle, telecom providers can gain a critical edge in the competition for more subscribers.
Are you a support manager or CX leader looking to improve the end-to-end customer experience? Download our case study to learn how Twigby increased the number of positive online customer reviews by 15%. Grab your copy today.
