Today’s customers have an expectation that they should receive a quality experience when they contact a company. Whatever their reason for reaching out to an organization, they work under the assumption that technical issues aren’t going to get in the way of communications.
Almost everyone would rather talk to a real person than automated communications when they call a company, according to a new study by B2B research firm Clutch. Of 501 people surveyed, 88% said they preferred speaking to humans and 72% said they usually speak to a human after encountering an IVR menu.
The reality of conducting business in the digital world is that technology is more in control of customer experience than we humans are. Consumers have high expectations. When things don’t go well, unmet expectations can devastate a company’s reputation and even negatively affect market share.
We’ve all been this guy (see pic above)….that’s why the most successful companies make CX their top priority. They know that a poor experience can leave their consumers feeling undervalued and angry. They also know that any resulting damage to the relationship is not easily repaired.
Within most service provider environments, the vast majority of customer care issues find their way to tier-2 or -3 network operations and engineering teams for resolution. But, with the volume of issues dramatically increasing due to growth in available data services and the proliferation of mobile device users, sustaining this model and resolving issues in a timely manner is becoming ever more difficult.
Over the course of the past several months, I’ve noticed a dramatic increase in the number stories related to the benefits of improving customer and user experience (CX/UX). It’s refreshing, since Empirix has always focused on testing and monitoring from the perspective of a customer’s experience, ( top down) and because of this we can accelerate the key business objectives of our clients by assuring application and network performance in real-world conditions.
Despite all the attention NFV is getting, there are areas that still need to be explored. For example, most of the discussion today revolved around the technology and the various options to adopt it, but few are thinking further down the road about how to ensure Service Assurance functions in these highly abstracted and complex virtual environments.
Churn continues to be a hot topic for all mobile service providers, regardless of their size or location. It’s easy to understand why, because customer churn could result in millions of lost revenues.
Empirix, Inc., the recognized leader in end-to-end network performance and customer behavior visibility, announced that Impact Telecom, a leading full-service telecommunications company, has selected Empirix’s Service Assurance solution as the single monitoring tool for their combined natonwide network.
Last week, Empirix announced the deployment of its Customer Experience solution with UK-based Telefonica O2. The solution’s implementation is evidence of an evolution occurring within the Service Assurance segment: Service providers such as O2 require solutions capable of providing greater levels of visibility into network traffic data, as well as the services and vendor devices deployed in an environment. But the real requirement now is the ability to provide specific insight into the customer base, enabling providers to understand gaps in service and quickly identify concentrated problem areas. Equipped with this knowledge, O2 is empowered to rapidly enhance service capabilities, improve customer experiences, and mitigate the risk of customer churn.
OGS selected the Empirix service assurance monitoring solution to gain visibility into the international connections providing carriers with access to its voice (both legacy circuit-switched and VoIP) and 2G/3G roaming services. With Empirix, OGS has uninterrupted visibility of network performance and service quality, as well as the ability proactively identify potential issues before they negatively impact customers. This flexible solution is capable of adapting to new technologies and innovative new services; OGS plans to extend the Empirix solution’s coverage to a recently announced LTE roaming service.