Most of us have telecom contracts. It might be your cellphone, home wifi, or even a landline contract – most consumers have to interact with telecom providers. Most of these contracts are subscriptions, so customers pay monthly for service access – often with many competitors out in the marketplace offering tempting alternative deals.
So, customer experience is an essential factor for telcos. High-quality customer experience that leaves customers satisfied can result in retaining existing customers. It can even attract new customers when telcos are compared by consumer journals or just customers sharing their experience using social media or word-of-mouth.
Telcos need to be reliable. They need to be responsive when customers need help. They need to create a sense of empathy and trust – so the agent needs to know what they are talking about and have in-depth knowledge about the services.
When customers start to feel dissatisfied with their telco provider, they easily switch to an alternative. They expect that any company will usually be better than their existing provider. This dissatisfaction creates a choppy environment for the telcos where customers will churn just because they are upset about a bill or a customer service interaction.
This is where GigCX could start changing the game for telcos.
Many telco customer service interactions require knowledgeable advice. How do I stop running out of data on my plan each month? How do I improve my wifi signal at home? How do I reduce my bill but still have the data I need available?
Interactions where the customer seeks advice are classic up-sell and cross-sell opportunities. The customer is happy to buy additional products as long as they are appropriate and help the customer with their issue. In this situation, the customer indicates that they want to buy something – they are happy to spend, but they need some advice on how to spend correctly.
Augmenting your existing customer service team with some GigCX workers allows any telco to build a team of brand advocates into their service mix. This means, seeking out people who love telecoms and have a deep understanding of how it works – how customers can get the best deals and be supported better by their provider.
Due to the emergence of more contact centers moving to a remote working model, customer service jobs are easy to find. To attain the best talent, it is time to offer flexible schedules where expert customer service representatives can pick and choose when and how long they work. With all the opportunities available in the present job market, a seasoned agent would never work 40+ hours weekly in a physical contact center. They will, however, work a few flexible hours each week from home. Build a team of these people, and you have a mighty force that can interact with customers and create sales opportunities without ever using hard-sell techniques. The customer is asking questions and expecting good advice.
In this situation, if you can offer experts that give detailed advice to the customer, you can increase sales and customer satisfaction at the same time. That’s usually difficult to manage, but it is possible with a GigCX approach to managing telco customer interactions.
Please leave a comment here if you have any questions or contact directly with the author, LiveXchange’s CRO, Terry Rybolt, via LinkedIn. You can follow our LinkedIn company page to ensure you always get the latest opinion and news on GigCX in your news feed.