Customer service is a challenging proposition for telecommunications companies. Managing the service work performed by field crews involves directing a large and dispersed workforce, tracking and managing equipment, personnel, and technological assets, and ensuring that the customer experience you provide leaves a positive impression of your employees, service offering, and company overall.
Consider also that the service requirements of consumers have never been higher. Today, customers are used to getting first-issue resolution from the brands they frequent, whereby their problems are resolved immediately, during the initial service inquiry. Addressing customer concerns during these pivotal interactions takes informed field crews, and that requires them to have easy, broad access to operational data. Not to mention that many customers expect their access to be proactively managed and outages to be virtually eliminated when it comes to their Internet access.
Here’s why first-issue resolution is so important to a telecom’s business model, and how implementing an enterprise-wide digitization platform for workforce management can translate into better, more informed service experiences.
Customers Hate to Wait
According to HubSpot Research, 33% of customers “are most frustrated by having to wait for service and 33% are most frustrated by having to repeat themselves to multiple support reps.” When a customer interacts with a field worker, they expect that person to have access to all the information they need to do their job. They do not want to have repeat the problems they have experienced or find out the service technician doesn’t have the equipment they need to fix the issue. Today’s consumer is accustomed to the kind of real-time data access delivered by the likes of Amazon and Uber.
Implementing an enterprise-grade telecom asset management platform allows back-office administrators and field crews to have access to all the data they need to do their jobs well. This is because these enterprise-wide solutions enable integration across systems, applications, and users, allowing field data to be disseminated and synched across the environment in real time.
With operational data dynamically updating for everyone, they can easily pinpoint when and where outages have occurred, which customers are impacted, and which field crews are located in proximity to the site in question. This data can then guide decision making so service is expedited, and issues are resolved quickly – often with just a single service interaction.
Information Drives Customer Confidence, Grows Relationships
Research conducted by Qualtrics XM Institute shows that “compared to after a 1-2- star experience, after a 5-star experience consumers are 3.6x more likely to recommend, 3.3x more likely to trust, and 2.6x more likely to purchase more.”
However, the telecommunications industry is highly competitive, with customers constantly being wooed by a long list of providers. As a telecom, your service model must deliver a 5-star experience for customers at every touchpoint – or they are likely to seek services elsewhere.
With the real-time data access enabled by platform-grade telecom asset management solutions, your teams can keep customers informed on the progress of field service work once it is ordered. Accordingly, customers always know when field crews will arrive on-site, what issues are being addressed, and when service will be restored. The ability to track your progress puts customers at ease as they feel heard, informed, and valued, a paradigm that instills confidence in your brand.
More Data Means Fewer Service Requests
With the deep data visibility enabled through digitization, your teams can coordinate more effectively and take a more proactive stance as well in addressing network maintenance, repairs, and upgrades. As a result, your company can more effectively run predictive models on network performance and troubleshoot many potential problems before they occur.
Ultimately, the best service experience you can provide for customers is one of reliability. And the best way to deliver service uptime is by preventing issues in the first place. With an enterprise-grade workforce management platform in place, your teams are well supported with the universal data access they need to prevent network issues – and better meet customer needs for first-issue resolution when problems occur.
When service calls are needed on their end, and the data your field team needs to complete the work successfully and on time, your customers are happier, and your internal teams can remain focused on what they do best: improving network performance and driving innovation to keep customers engaged and loyal to your brand for the long term.
See how an enterprise-grade telecom workforce asset management platform can unlock data, transform your service model, and grow customer relationships.
