Boosting the Telco CX

We live in fast-paced times. This accelerated pace includes customer expectations.

According to research we conducted, 46% of customers say it takes up to 10 minutes to reply to a query.

Now, we know time is relative. Famed physicist Albert Einstein said so before adding “[time’s] only worth depends upon what we do as it is passing.”

Waiting for a reply to a customer support query doesn’t really elevate time’s worth, does it?

So, what can telcos do to improve customer experience?

Nobody likes waiting in line – whether virtual or actual physical queues. Waiting is a literal waste of time we have precious little of.

In fact, we found 48% of telco customers switched providers because requests weren’t resolved in a timely manner.

So, imagine you’re talking to 10 of your valued customers. They all have pressing issues that are super urgent to each of them. You invest effort in addressing each individual query with the utmost care and attention. Can you picture it?

Okay. Now 5 customers just left because they were waiting for what they felt was too long.

This actually happens.

What can you do about this?

Chatbots.

Specifically, you can accelerate time to resolution using chatbots.

In addition, using chatbot frees up your agents, which allows them to focus on more complex customer queries.

I know what you’re thinking:

“But what about the human touch?”

Trust me when I say that customers want speedy resolution. In fact, 9 out of 10 customers said they’re willing to interact with a telco chatbot for support.

Now, remember our example with the 10 valued customers waiting? If you had a chatbot in that hypothetical situation, you’d have 9 customers willingly interacting with a chatbot.

So, find a chatbot building platform, develop a chatbot and call it a day, right? Not quite…

It’s not just about providing quick customer service. Good customer service is just as – if not more – important.

In fact, in our survey we found 53% of customers quit their provider over poor customer service. Ouch.

Answering telco customer support queries quickly and answering them well are two different things.

But you can do both.

For fast and good customer service, you should focus on replying to key customer queries that chatbots can handle.

The main intents, according to our analysis of 75 million chatbot customer service interactions are:

Checking a technical or network issueGetting service status informationLodging a fault

There are more, of course – but this should give you a basic idea of where to start programming your chatbot.

For more ideas, check out our guide on building the perfect telco chatbot:

In the part above, I focused on the “why” of chatbots for boosting telco customer experience. Now let’s get into the how.

Chatbots boost customer experience by providing fast responses to common customer queries – we’ve said as much.

An omnichannel chatbot does more.

Remember how I mentioned earlier that human agents can take over more complex issues?

Well, imagine a customer starts engaging with a chatbot on one of your channels. And imagine your chatbot can’t resolve the super specific issue your customer is encountering.

When that happens, a human agent can seamlessly continue the conversation.

Your customer doesn’t have to explain their super specific issue all over again (which is something customers find annoying).

Instead, a well-trained agent who is specialized at resolving that super specific customer complaint gets tagged in – and solves the customer’s issue.

This means that your customer, who is interacting with you using the channel they prefer, got an immediate response to their query from a customer service chatbot.

This makes the 48% of customers who switched providers for slow responses stick around with you a while longer.

Let’s keep going…

Next, let’s say that despite its best efforts to help, your chatbot just couldn’t resolve the customer’s super specific issue.

It happens.

Your system tagged in your top agent to resolve the issue – without the customer having to describe the issue all over again.

This resulted in speedy resolution of the customer’s query, seamlessly, over their channel of choice.

Sounds like good customer service, to me.

You know, the kind of service that 53% of customers who quit a provider over poor customer service would appreciate.

Chatbots do more for telcos than just provide speedy customer support, of course.

They can help you convert the approximately 50% of competitor customers who are less than happy with their customer service by automating SIM orders.

Chatbots can help you activate these users, too, and accelerate time to first usage. This can be further helped self-service via conversational user interfaces for topping up.

They can even turn your messaging aps into new revenue streams by getting chatbots to upsell or cross sell to your new customers.

All of these are components of great telco customer CX that chatbots help you boost.