The Customer Service Survey
Testing is Good. Successfully Implementing Change is Harder.
Thu - January 12, 2006 04:07 PM in
Over two years ago, we realized since our test callers are also real consumers, we could get some great feedback if we ask that any time a tester needs to contact their wireless carrier, bank or airline for any reason that they complete a before/after survey on the experience.
We call the service SectorPulse and we publish reports every quarter with the data we collect. We're about to release our ninth quarterly report on the mobile phone industry, so we've been doing this a while..
I just got the data on wireless companies from the 4th quarter of 2005 and in a meeting yesterday, a business associate mentioned attending a seminar session conducted by T-Mobile on the importance of usability testing. So I took a look specifically at the SectorPulse data on T-Mobile from 4Q 2003 through 4Q 2005. This isn't meant to pick on T-Mobile so much as it is to point out that there can be a spread between knowing the importance of a positive caller experience and successfully implementing improvements.
26% more of T-Mobile customers report being very satisfied with the company than those reporting dissatisfaction. That's fairly consistent with the other four major carriers (the average is 25%) and slightly above average when compared to all businesses in our database.
76% of callers were able to complete their business with one call, and of course this means one caller in four has to call in more than one time to resolve an issue. That is somewhat worse than cross industry averages for single call resolution.
T-Mobile now completes about 1/2 of all contacts entirely within an IVR. That's up about 10% from a year ago, suggesting they have installed some new self-service applications in that time. But most interestingly, over the same time period the percent of callers reporting frustration at reaching a live operator also rose by about 10%.
Before the change, the average time it took for a caller to complete their business (including multiple calls) was about 4.5 minutes and it got longer through the first three quarters of 2005, dropping back to the same 4.5 minutes in the last quarter.
And lastly, the experience dealing with T-Mobile was such that more customers reported being likely to switch to another carrier after contacting the company than before they called in. To be fair however, this negative loyalty shift is shared by the other major carriers too.
T-Mobile obviously spent gosh knows how many $$$ to install some new IVR late in 2004. The result? Average business transaction length didn't change, meaning they saved no telco expense. The IVR picked up about 10% more of their calls, but caller frustration also rose by 10% and 24% of callers now have to call back more than once when a year ago it was 15%. So whatever savings they hoped to realize in agent overhead was lost since the added 10% of IVR handled calls is offset by a 9% increase in multiple calls from the same customer.
In sum, while I have no doubt they gave a good presentation, the data we collected shows that for whatever reason they didn't manage to actually improve the customer experience.
We run across these kinds of results very frequently.
Posted by Rick Rappe'
I just got the data on wireless companies from the 4th quarter of 2005 and in a meeting yesterday, a business associate mentioned attending a seminar session conducted by T-Mobile on the importance of usability testing. So I took a look specifically at the SectorPulse data on T-Mobile from 4Q 2003 through 4Q 2005. This isn't meant to pick on T-Mobile so much as it is to point out that there can be a spread between knowing the importance of a positive caller experience and successfully implementing improvements.
26% more of T-Mobile customers report being very satisfied with the company than those reporting dissatisfaction. That's fairly consistent with the other four major carriers (the average is 25%) and slightly above average when compared to all businesses in our database.
76% of callers were able to complete their business with one call, and of course this means one caller in four has to call in more than one time to resolve an issue. That is somewhat worse than cross industry averages for single call resolution.
T-Mobile now completes about 1/2 of all contacts entirely within an IVR. That's up about 10% from a year ago, suggesting they have installed some new self-service applications in that time. But most interestingly, over the same time period the percent of callers reporting frustration at reaching a live operator also rose by about 10%.
Before the change, the average time it took for a caller to complete their business (including multiple calls) was about 4.5 minutes and it got longer through the first three quarters of 2005, dropping back to the same 4.5 minutes in the last quarter.
And lastly, the experience dealing with T-Mobile was such that more customers reported being likely to switch to another carrier after contacting the company than before they called in. To be fair however, this negative loyalty shift is shared by the other major carriers too.
T-Mobile obviously spent gosh knows how many $$$ to install some new IVR late in 2004. The result? Average business transaction length didn't change, meaning they saved no telco expense. The IVR picked up about 10% more of their calls, but caller frustration also rose by 10% and 24% of callers now have to call back more than once when a year ago it was 15%. So whatever savings they hoped to realize in agent overhead was lost since the added 10% of IVR handled calls is offset by a 9% increase in multiple calls from the same customer.
In sum, while I have no doubt they gave a good presentation, the data we collected shows that for whatever reason they didn't manage to actually improve the customer experience.
We run across these kinds of results very frequently.
Posted by Rick Rappe'
Posted at 04:07 PM | | | | |