The Evolution of 3G Customer Service

Jan. 1, 2000 12:00 AM

The advent of 3G technologies has brought a new dynamic to the wireless marketplace. Pricing is no longer the only differentiator among carriers fighting for subscribers - now more than ever, customer service is key.

Encouraging consumers to adopt 3G services in the United States, and supporting them when they do so, will be a major challenge, especially as carriers fight to reduce costs and offer the lowest possible price point to savvy consumers. Competition between operators is reaching new heights - pressuring each carrier to squeeze operating costs as much as possible. As a result, a new customer service challenge has emerged in achieving greater customer satisfaction, faster, with the same resources. Yet, the move to 2.5G and 3G technology will actually expedite the move to online customer service.

The successful carrier providing 3G services will be able to meet customer service needs effectively and economically. While these goals may seem mutually exclusive, they actually complement each other perfectly. The answer lies in offering Web-based support services that reduce the customers' reliance on the call center.

Research from Gartner Group suggests that calls handled by inbound call centers can cost over $20 per call. Web-based, external-facing customer support, on the other hand, can cut those costs dramatically. In fact, just by moving customer service to e-mail, service costs are decreased 80%.

Savings are even more significant in self-service. In fact, companies point to savings of 99%. In addition to being more cost effective, these online support services complement the lifestyle of the wired consumer, a key first audience for carriers. There are a few steps that can be taken to implement these effective, economical support services:

Make the Web the front line of customer support: Many network operators already boast extensive online self-help and account management facilities - a move in the right direction. However, as Forrester Research has pointed out, when the right content is either hard to find or does not completely resolve the question, the cost savings is not realized. This is an especially important lesson in providing content that is exactly what the customer needs.

To ensure that content remains up to date and appropriate, carriers must make certain that they have access to the most relevant and timely information from each partner, and any other knowledge creator. By utilizing a customer service knowledge base that can pull information from any existing system into a single interface, the customer is able to tap the expert resource directly, without ever leaving the carrier's self-service site.

Not only does this provide a seamless experience for the customer, it allows the information to be immediately and directly updated by the partner or expert in charge of the content. It's easy to roll out such solutions, and it can be done via the Web. For example, through Web services initiatives and by leveraging Web-architected technology, a partner or supplier can pull knowledge, in almost real-time, from disparate locations into a single user interface for immediate access by the customer or agent.

Support digital customer service: creating a 'collaborative enterprise': It's clear that automating customer support processes as far as possible can slash customer care costs. However, success depends on the wider enterprise being closely involved with the process. This is nothing new - management gurus have argued for many years that every element of the enterprise must be geared toward the customer. Turning this vision into reality, however, is a new challenge.

If not managed correctly, enterprises moving customer service online can risk alienating the customer, or further remove the customer from the individuals who make up the organization. Online customer service requires the availability of information from everywhere in the organization. The onus is on the knowledge creators to keep the information in their own internal systems relevant, but technology can help link the systems together and present the information cleanly to the customer.

The difficulty in seamlessly providing this information to the customer lies with legacy IT systems. As is typical at any carrier, each department within the company will have developed its own databases and information stores to cater to the specific needs of the group. These disparate systems can be difficult and expensive to interconnect - though wasteful to remove altogether. One element, however, that can connect every department is the Web - and that's where the solution lies.

Web-based, open standards like J2EE or .NET were explicitly developed to make it easier to interface with legacy databases and facilitate information sharing via the Internet. E-business platforms architected from the ground up on these standards could at last bring every department, from accounts to sales, into contact with the customer.

By connecting each of these databases, the company presents a single external face. No longer will calls end with, "I'm sorry, I don't have access to that system from here - could you call the department directly?" Having sorted out the company's approach to information sharing, offering excellent customer service will be an easy process no matter how the customer contacts the company.

Get the wireless carriers involved: A perfect example of the importance of providing the right content is found in the wireless carrier and its 3G partners. Many wireless carriers see a major benefit in using eCRM for the coming era of 3G to handle relationships between the many vendors that provide 3G technologies, such as the ability to send and receive streaming media. As customers contact their wireless provider on a multitude of questions not directly associated with the carrier (messaging, e-mail, Web access), carriers must be able to use CRM tools such as a comprehensive knowledge base, analytics, and e-mail management systems to access and provide the right content to answer questions as quickly and thoroughly as possible.

Provide service for customers on the move - going digital: Next-generation mobile devices will be able to support a number of applications. Why can't customer service be one of them? Offering subscribers the ability to e-mail queries, or even chat via online channels directly with customer service representatives, from their wireless devices, wherever they may be, offers unparalleled flexibility. It also allows the customer time to focus on other important items while the customer service representative works on their query.

Supporting customers through digital channels is also cost effective - it can cost a fifth the price of handling a phone call, according to Gartner. Forrester Research has found that CSRs can handle up to four Internet chat sessions simultaneously with little impact on service levels - in direct contrast to supporting just one customer at a time over the phone.

Wireless e-mail management can be automated entirely by forwarding the customer to the department best able to handle each query and by automatically generating suggested responses based on analysis of the e-mail's content. Investments in wireless e-mail management will deliver rapid ROI, as pressure on the call center eases.

If I Build It, Will They Come?
Rolling out a next-generation customer support infrastructure to support your next-generation subscribers is good in theory, but subscribers have to want to adopt these new services. While the issue of migrating GSM subscribers to 2.5G and 3G services is an in-depth topic and could warrant its own article, many of the technologies and approaches discussed above act as a powerful driver for customer service migration. This proactive customer service not only leverages the power of a company's existing reactive eCRM tools; if done correctly, it can significantly increase the customer base and reduce churn.

These initiatives include:

Expand multichannel marketing: SMS and e-mail are key tools in the battle to drive mainstream adoption of 3G. Consumers who have already embraced text messaging are likely to be the first to embrace new technology like streaming video. Text messengers are a captive audience for the carrier trying to upsell 2.5G and 3G technologies, as they are the most tech-savvy users. Therefore text messaging is a very effective marketing campaign.

Consider closed-loop marketing: Often carriers are overwhelmed with marketing campaigns to new customers, trying to steal customers away from other carriers with lower rate plans and more free minutes. In order to have successful marketing initiatives surrounding 3G services, carriers need to find and target their most loyal customers. This is where closed-loop marketing is most effective. Customers' responses (or non-response) to marketing communications should help determine the advertisements and promotions they are sent in the future.

For example, if a young father was interested in an earlier campaign focused on sending and receiving family photographs, he may be interested in the next-level of 3G service - digital media - to send family videos. The end result of this targeted communication is an increasingly constructive "dialogue" with individual customers.

Sales, marketing, and service must be integrated: If you've recently contacted a customer, the message should be repeated to them when they log in to your online portal, when they receive their bill, and when they are contacted via e-mail. The customer must be given the opportunity to take action on an invitation via whichever tool is most convenient for them. Not only does this increase the likelihood that a customer will respond to an invitation, it also streamlines corporate communication and ensures that the company is functioning as a single, autonomous unit. The Web-architected e-business platforms discussed above can help bring these elements together.

The Fourth Generation: Looking Ahead
As we've discussed, the key to reduced customer service overheads and increased adoption of 3G technologies lie in driving traffic away from expensive call centers and toward more economical channels such as Web-based self-service, e-mail, and chat. This is a major change for customers - the shift away from the phone to the Web will not be completed overnight.

However, the prospect of sourcing information directly from the most authoritative specialist sources in the enterprise, and the flexibility of digital channels to support customers without the need for lengthy phone calls will help create a new standard for customer service. The next generation of service applications will simultaneously benefit both the business and the customer in a way we have never seen before.

About Bud Michael
Bud Michael is CEO of San Jose, CA high-availability software company Availigent (www.availigent.com).