Telecoms companies urged to improve customer service: where to start?

For a long time, companies in the telecoms industry have been criticized for low transparency, unfair prices and bad customer support. Large companies are dominating the market share, which means that they can do almost as they please. The telecoms industry is difficult to compete in as a startup, as you either need a lot of funding to get started on your own, or you need to buy your way into being dependent on the big companies anyway.

They have, however, promised change and have even delivered on some aspects. Companies are offering more transparency and more flexible packages for their customers. These aspects of their products are the easy ones to act on and change. Information and transparency can be improved by making a few changes and is mostly a matter of choice.

Customer service, however, is still lacking in quality, studies show. Customer service will of course be boosted by customers getting access to fairer prices and more information about the product they are buying. However, that is not all. Many queries can not be solved by more information, or reading the FAQ. The broadband industry is complex and offers many difficult solutions, which leads to just as many questions from customers.

Customer service is often considered as a big expense, seeing as it costs a lot of man-hours and has a low turnover. This is the wrong perception and approach to customer service, as there are many different ways to optimize a business’ customer service department.

Invest in workflow tech

Seeing the value of improving customer service, Nexcom decided to develop a piece of intelligent software, called workflow management software. This solution can save you both time and money, by automating many of the tasks that are done by employees today. The eTray program works by recognizing words that define what the query is about. Relevant words are ‘order number’, details of customers such as names, addresses, methods of contact and what the question is about.

Once the program has detected what the customer’s query is about, it will forward it to the responsible employee. This forward will have all the important details highlighted, such as the details of the client and what the problem is. The program will also attach former inquiries or orders that the customer has made in the past. This saves a lot of time for the employee when processing the case.

As such, when improving your customer service, you should start by investing in tech. Improving customer service is no longer as expensive as it once was and can be done in other ways than just hiring more employees.