Customer self-service is gaining greater traction in the telecom industry, as more telecom operators and service providers increasingly view the technology as a strategic tool for customer retention and differentiation, rather than simply a way to shift high-volume, routine and low-cost interactions to less expensive channels.
Today, many telecom businesses rely on self-service techniques to reduce labor costs by enabling customers to help themselves to information and resources. It's a proven strategy for boosting customer satisfaction and reducing costs. Although the telecom industry started introducing self service to reduce contact time with live agents in early 2000, many telcos and service providers initially were halfhearted about embracing it.
However, that is now changing. More telcos realize the value proposition for self service and have started putting money into self-service initiatives, especially Web-based deployments. This trend is being aided by an increasing acceptance of the Web as a transactional platform for cost-effective customer self-care and service.
According to the Yankee Group, telcos in the US will increase their spending in self-service implementations by 30% during the next two years, with the majority of the investment going to the Web self-service channel. Similar trends are expected to be found in the Asia Pacific region, with an increase of 20-25% over the same period, the research firm says.
Scott Kolman, director of industry segment marketing at Amdocs, adds that the telcos recent push in self-service deployment is mainly driven by customers that find such capabilities far exceed the traditional use of EBPP (electronic bill presentment and payment) and expect more functionality in billing, ordering and maintenance.
'End-users nowadays are becoming more comfortable with the use of the Internet, and they now also want to manage all the things on their own,' he says. 'To increase customer satisfaction and reduce churn, telcos are increasingly giving their customers more power to manage their networks over the Internet and encouraging them to become their own service representative.'
Tier 1 carriers in the US and Europe such as BT, France Telecom, AT&T and Verizon have invested heavily in enhancing and adding new features to their Web-based self-service channels, which traditionally encompass features such as electronic billing and trouble ticketing. While the goal is to create a unified service portal to retain customers, carriers are looking for cost-effective, profitable ways to manage broadband services through deployment of self-service solutions. For example, with the use of 'built-in' diagnostic feature for Web-based self care, these services are self-managing both at the customer premises and in the network.
Targeting enterprise customers
Another key focus of the recent telco self-service initiatives uses advanced features (such as live chat with support staff and interfaces for mobile devices) to differentiate self-service offerings and provide a better customer experience for top enterprise accounts.
AT&T, for instance, made substantial progress implementing new collaboration tools such as live Web chats with support personnel to improve the overall enterprise customer experience, according to Arindam Banerjee, telecom software strategies senior analyst with the Yankee Group.
He says tier one carriers will continue to invest significantly in Web self-service deployment over the next several years as their e-portals grow more important as a primary channel for enterprise customer interaction.
'These service providers have realized self-service portals not only reduce costs by eliminating live agent contact and shifting contact to a Web-enabled chat session, but they collect information that helps deliver focused, personalized service to the enterprise customers,' he notes.