MCI EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW
he says. “Even if I can get all of this data, and process it in a very clear and concise way, who do I give it to? And is that person set up to receive it? Network operators—and OEMs— traditionally run very siloed environ- ments but I need to be able to deliver this information into an organisation that is capable of making decisions and acting on those decisions in an effective way. So there’s real change required, structurally and culturally, to create an industry that becomes far more customer experience focused than it is today. The customer experi- ence needs to be managed horizontally, as a process.” The type of feedback generated by
automated survey tools in the imme- diate wake of a customer interaction needs to be treated with caution, Ffoulkes-Jones says, describing it as of “questionable value”. While he says that it is an absolute requirement for operators to survey their customers, he points out that text-based feed- back, for example, provides only the snapshot of a moment. “It’s not a measure of the customer
experience, it’s a measure of how they feel right at that minute,” he says. “If they’ve had a tremendous transaction within the operator, they can feel re- ally positive. But the next day they could get a dropped call and then feel terribly negative. So these data are important but they are not the only things that operators should be looking at. “A truer test would be looking at the
churn rate, the level it’s at and wheth- er it’s trending in the right direction. But even that isn’t a completely safe basis for assumption because it could just be that the operator was the first to launch the iPhone. O2 has one of the lowest churn rates in the UK and I wonder if that’s because they’re a great network, or because they were the first to market with the iPhone,” he says. Data derived from the network
can also be improved upon, he says. Operators may well carry out com- pliance testing for devices that they want to offer to their customers but ticking the box doesn’t go far enough. “How many times do they test the device against the experience their customers have had of the father of that device previously? That would help operators start to understand, from a user’s perspective, whether that device is really appropriate for the network.” The trouble with customer experi- ence is that, while operators labour to meet KPIs on everything from dropped calls to complaint resolu- tion, customers add an abstract, emotional layer to the mix that is far more difficult to manage. While this can’t be controlled, says the WDS CEO, it can be influenced. If an opera- tor works to build brand equity with its customer, by consistently execut- ing well on its customer interactions and by learning and improving, then they can be honest with their customers about their successes. If, on the other hand, the operator is promising to deliver something that cannot be delivered, a gap is created through which customer loyalty can seep away. “That’s why we would say that customer experience isn’t about the user interface, or the fact that you’ve done network compliance testing, or your dropped call rates. It’s about all of these things and more. It has to be a continuous and relentless drive towards building better and better services for the customer— that’s how operators can build that loyalty,” he says. Competition for loyalty is intensify-
ing, though. Over the top players have increased the complexity and depth of the mobile experience but are also threatening the operator community’s control of the customer relationship. One by one, core territories that the operators sought to retain as their
Mobile Communications International | First for news, best for business
own—think services, content and billing—have been colonised by third party providers. But Ffoulkes-Jones argues that this creates an oppor- tunity for mobile operators, as well as a threat, because the over the top players are not making the customer experience a core focus. “They’re saying they’ll have a good deal of the revenue but they don’t fancy any of the costs, which is a great business model if you can work it,” he says. “But if you look at Google, they have the OS and they’ll sell the apps but they’re not assuming responsibil- ity for the experience of the whole solution. So the operators have the opportunity to step in and tell users that they should be loyal to them be- cause they will manage the experience and make sure that it is reflective of their brand.” But if operators do pursue this approach, they will not be alone. At the retail end at least, they are likely to soon have competition from inde- pendent players. “Some retailers could take a truly independent view of the customer and say that, of everything that is on offer, a particular product is most suitable,” he explains. “That solution could be a television, a laptop or a tablet, or it could be a network, a device or an application. That’s not how it is yet, but there are lots of other companies that could get into this space if it’s not taken up by the operators.” Under fire from all sides as they are in Ffoulkes-Jones’ sketch of the industry, this is the last thing that operators will want to hear. And he suggests that they can only ensure their continued relevance by weighting the customer’s experience such that it occupies a complete 360-degree world view. “It’s not the only information you’ll need to make the right decisions, but it’s a significant chunk of it if you want to ensure that you are delivering an experience that’s reflective of your brand,” he says. n
11
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48