One of the biggest challenges that telecom industry executives face is customer churn. While churn rates vary by country and by provider, annual churn rates for telecom companies average between 10 percent and 67 percent, according to the Database Marketing Institute. And while there are a variety of reasons that customers disconnect from wireless providers in particular - dissatisfaction with the quality of service, cost, poor customer support - the use of customer data and analytics is providing decision-makers with new ways to identify potential triggers for churn and opportunities to strengthen customer relationships.
Organizations that deliver exceptional customer support typically have at least a few things in common. They listen closely to what customers are asking for and not only act on customer feedback but they also communicate back to customers how and whether their requests were acted on. They align their customer service processes and practices with customer-centric goals and objectives. These organizations also strive to make it easy for customer-facing employees to provide customers with seamless support to ensure that both customers and employees have exceptional experiences. In short, as evidenced by the three winners of the Innovation in Service Excellence category for the 2015 Gartner & 1to1 Media Customer Experience Excellence Awards, they provide a customer-focused approach to delivering great service.
When an auto customer buys or leases a vehicle at a car dealership, it's common for the salesperson to ask the customer to give them the highest possible marks in the customer satisfaction survey that's soon to follow. While I've been pressured by dealer salespeople to do this on more than one occasion (and even within the past several weeks), I've come to discover that these aren't simply the actions of an overzealous salesperson that is out to pad his or her annual bonus. Customer satisfaction scores are also used by car manufacturers to reward dealerships with financial incentives and for automakers to flaunt their results over rivals. No matter how you slice it, it's a flawed process that ultimately dissatisfies customers and can change an otherwise good customer experience into a bad one.
