* This article is part of a White Paper called “What Telecom Customers Expect from Your Website and how to Exceed Their Expectations.”

What are the some of the problems inherent in trying to deliver the best possible customer service via traditional avenues?

These problems persist in the online environment as there are quite low expectations because of how customer service has been handled in the past.

1. Self Service is Too Complex and Customers Get Frustrated

Amdocs commissioned a customer survey by Coleman Parkes in 2012 that said while 75% of customers said they would prefer to use the internet for customer service only 37% said they do that because the sites are “are often perceived as inaccurate or incomplete.”

That is rather surprising. More likely it is the bad design or unresponsive nature of these sites that cause more frustration that inaccuracy. Either way, the situation is obviously not resolved.

2. Customers Overload the Help-Line with Simple How-To Requests After They Give Up on Self-Service Tasking

If the website is not simple to use and information not easy to find then the customer will not even bother to use it.

Instead they will call your call center and tie up expensive customer service agents with questions or requests for account changes.

This is going in the opposite direction from your goal which is to drive people to the web so that they can service their own requests, thus driving down costs for the business, plus helping cut churn.

3. Companies Find It Difficult to Drive Telecom Customers to Action

A well-designed portal can drive sales. But there is the difficulty of closing the deal online if people are using the site only to browse.

Telcom selfservice portals need to drive users to action.

4. Customers Have Negative Online Experiences Leading to High Customer Churn

If your website is confusing or suffers outages, then customers who like to manage their affairs online are going to look elsewhere for wireless service.

They already hate the phone company for the most part, so don’t give them another reason to bolt for the competition.

5. Customers are Often Hostile Towards Customer Service

Customers usually get in a bad mood when they have to call the customer support center. For years they have dealt with clumsy customer support CSPS systems, like integrated voice response (IVR) with lengthy menu trees.

They get annoyed when the IVR system asks them for their cell phone number then the person who comes on the line asks them for that again.

All of this takes what are normally pleasant people and infects them with something like road rage. They unleash their anger on the poor customer service agent who has to take their call.

6. Problem with Outsourcing Customer Service

As corporations have rushed to push customer support to the lowestcost countries over the last 15 years, they have annoyed their customers in many cases.

Lots of people are bothered when they have to speak English with someone who has a very heavy accent. They are also further bothered when someone appears to be reading from a script.

7. Getting to the Right Person

If your company offers cable service, land lines, and cellular service then already the customer has to go through a larger set of menus until they find the service that they use.

Customers today have a lot more technical knowledge than they used too. So they do not have the patience to deal with front line support persons when they know their issue calls for a tier II person.

They do not like to wait and explain and wait and explain again the same issue to a different person. Their frustration is getting to that person they know they need.

This article is part of a White Paper called “What Telecom Customers Expect from Your Website and how to Exceed Their Expectations.”

If you want to read the rest of the book, follow the link below.

 The White Paper covers a range of topics including:

Chapter 1: Seven Online Obstacles that Derail Your Customer Success Efforts.

Chapter 2: 10 Tips to Exceed Your Telecom Customers Online Experiences.

Chapter 3: Tools You Must Know About that Will Make Online Self-Service Effortless.

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