RSS 2.0 FeedJanuary 2009, In the Customer's Corner
The Real Bundled Experience
Welcome to the first episode of the Customer's Corner. Nothing better than to launch commentary from the customers’ corner than to describe a real customer experience, so let's talk about my own recent mini-drama:
I’m a new girl in a new town. With all the housing choices in the market and "newly converted from British pound" dollars in my pocket, I went with a new designer condo wired head to toe. So, I thought choosing a telecommunications service provider might be kind of fun in this new bundled landscape with companies selling television, Internet access, phone service, content and more. I also thought that this would be the perfect opportunity to experience and write about quad-play acquisition from a customer perspective.
And what an experience. The main thing I learned from was that service providers’ processes are developed based on the limitations of their systems, databases and policies rather than what the buying process would be for a customer. Am I surprised? Mapping out the end to end customer process is a concept I’ve been peddling as a consultant for a couple of years now - though I’ve not seen one client or service provider actually do it - so no, I wasn't surprised.
Here’s the journey:
1. Customer (yours truly) starts to shop around for bundled services for a new home – listens to the radio, television, talks to new colleagues, reads the paper. There are lots of ads for many different service providers. I’ve been told that Verizon FiOs is in town, so is AT&T UVerse, DirecTV, Time Warner cable and Comcast. Wow, choices! What a change from living in the UK where the only quad play in town was Virgin Media (who never returned my multiple responses to their direct mail) and the only triple play was British Telecom who only offered a very limited selection of television channels. So, full communications shopping in London was like how your mother used to shop for groceries – she went to the butchers, fishmonger, vegetable stand and so on….mobile separate from fixed, separate from the Internet and television.
2. I’m a busy girl too so I decide to do my research at the end of a late night at the office (too new for a social life yet). I start down the list to see which services are offered for my uptown address. That was the first problem – trying to determine if my address qualifies for service is a unique exploration in how not to design web sites. I never could figure out if I was served by Verizon – their website couldn’t recognize a new build address (even though the developer had registered the new address 18 months earlier). Comcast quickly said no.
AT&T’s site first indicated that yes, UVerse is in my area so I happily went down the path of filling in all the information to order on line thinking, “Ah, this will be so simple”. After filling in all my details and credit card information, pressing enter….the process broke down saying it couldn’t verify that my address was served. Nowhere could I find a number to call. In fact, the error message just looked like a possible computer glitch so I blindly went through the whole process over again to be told on the last step again that it couldn’t verify if service could be delivered for the television portion of my order.
By now it’s late; I’m tired, frustrated and hungry. I’m now giving up on quad play and settle for triple play Time Warner and again, the same illusion as AT&T. Service is definitely provided in my area but after going through the whole process, the website cannot verify that my address is actually served (even though I do know that two of my four neighbours in the complex have Time Warner). However, at least their website had a simple message and process to have you pick up the phone, call a certain number and the call center picks up the order from there. But there the nice process stopped.
3. To get my service installed and activated, I needed to call a separate number and that one isn’t manned at this late hour in the evening. I call the next day to be told that my information hasn’t travelled yet from one system to another and to please call back again at 11:00 the next day. Now I don’t know about you, but I’m busy and calling a certain person at a certain time is fine if you don’t have meetings, conference calls and clients to looks after. After three days, I’m able to catch the person I need to schedule an installation….you know the usual, they can’t narrow the time down less than 4 hours. I also explain to the rep that without fixed line service yet, my front gate call button doesn’t work so I can’t hear the bell and the installer needs to call my cell phone to let me know he’s there. This is getting very complicated.
4. The nice installer shows up (without calling my mobile – thank goodness I saw him leaving the gate from the window) wanting me to show and tell him how the complex and the house are wired. Now, I may work in this industry but when it comes to installation – I’m as clueless as my mother. The gentleman gave up.
I call the electrician get some vague instruction on the phone and call Time Warner again and arrange to work another half day at home without a phone, Internet service or a working doorbell. The same guy shows up, manages to install something – having just come over the pond with no US appliances, the only thing I have to test is my laptop and the front gate. We get the laptop working after a couple of hours but the gate call button will only ring the phone on the ground floor – that’s a job for the electrician (even though I know the bell is already wired to the fixed line phone line which should run throughout the home). At least Internet service is initiated.
5. I finally buy some phones and find out that the phone service doesn’t work. Besides not being given a phone number, the line has been patched into the complex’s fire and alarm phone line from AT&T so I can’t dial out. I call Time Warner again and arrange service for my third half day working from home without a phone but at least I have Internet this time. Thankfully for him, a different installer arrives who figures out what is wrong, gets the phones to work but now the front gate call button doesn’t – that’s a job for the electrician.
Meanwhile, I’ve had to pay an electrician to come out twice to patch up the work that Time Warner did or didn’t do…and guess what? My phantom ground floor phone still rings every Saturday and Sunday morning at 6:12am – when I pick up the phone, it’s a line test. I’m not calling Time Warner back – but I can bet you that somehow it is picking up a channel or is somehow still patched to fire and alarm line.
6. I’m not looking forward to getting my first television. I’m sure I’m in for another half day at home and expensive bill from the electrician. Should I re-evaluate? My neighbours insist that UVerse is in the neighbourhood and they tell me that AT&T’s bundled service installation and activation is even worse than Time Warner’s. My electrician swears by Verizon but he doesn’t use them for mobile or television – so back to boutique shopping again.
Lessons learned here? Even if a consumer wants to buy bundled quad-play service, he must be very committed, patient and determined.
I know from working for a service provider that the typical operational process for the above transaction would have been split up between the on-line channel, service delivery, and customer service. The data about my residence, order and service was probably all there somewhere but in three different databases. The business process for quad play qualification, activation and service if even written down is probably broken up by channel, department and only starts when a ticket number is issued and ends when the installer leaves the premise. My customer process still hasn’t ended yet. Not until I test that television service.
How can service providers increase the take up of bundled services? Not by discounting prices further…I would have paid much more for a seamless, painless on-line order, installation one time and working service.
The key to success is mapping out the end to end customer process and determining how operational and business processes and policies can bend with minimal system customization. The customer process mapping is easy but never done – primarily because the inertia of working internally to build cross department and channel processes is overwhelming.
Even the simple act of putting a phone number to call on a web page when an online process fails indicates that it can work. It may require a third party or cross channel department to do the work – but believe the customer, it makes a difference. Please somebody... anybody out there?
Lisa Modisette is a recognised expert in customer management (segmentation, churn, database marketing, loyalty & experience) most recently with Amdocs Consulting. Her experience includes areas such as business transformation programs, loyalty programmes and customer strategy, segmentation, customer lifecycle management, best practice database marketing, customer experience, contact management, CRM gap analyses, marketing planning and communications, product marketing and churn modeling. Her current research area is in the mobile customer experience, and mobile loyalty & data services.
Lisa's previous positions include Founder and Principal Consultant for Info Insight Ltd, Interim Manager of Segmentation, Customer Insight & Market Research at Vodafone UK, Managing Director of European Operations for Lightbridge, and Director of Telecommunications Industry Marketing for Metaphor (an IBM subsidiary) She has been engaged a numerous consulting engagements at Cingular, AT&T, Vodafone, T-Mobile, Orange, MCI, Deutsche Telecom, KPN and so on. She has a lengthy publication and public speaking list, including journals, international conferences and articles. She is the author of Baskerville Telecom's report, Mobile Customer Experience 2003-2007: How companies can survive in an evolving market. Lisa may be reached at Lisa.Modisette@amdocs.com