C Spire, which earned the Platinum Award in the “Voice of the Customer” category at the inaugural Loyalty360 Awards in March 2014, is always thinking about its customers. The Mississippi-based diversified telecommunications and technology services firm wants to accelerate efforts to place its 1 million customers at the center of every decision it makes.
C Spire, which offers wireless, Gigabit Internet access, digital TV, phone and voice, data, and cloud services to consumers and businesses, has launched the next phase of its customer-relationship evolution initiative called, “Customer Inspired 2.0,” which will help spark further improvements in its southeastern U.S. operations.
Loyalty360 caught up with Suzy Hays, senior vice president of consumer markets for C Spire, to find out more about this exciting new customer-centric venture
What is Customer Inspired 2.0 and what are your goals for it from a customer engagement/customer experience perspective?
Hays: Customer Inspired 2.0 is an enterprise-wide initiative at C Spire that’s part of our continuing efforts to become the easiest company to do business with in our industry. We are building on our long-standing commitment to be inspired by our customers. It starts with customer intelligence, listening to our customers and our front lines.
C Spire has a long history of research that helps us stay on top of customer concerns. We made a major renewed push to get feedback from our front lines on obstacles that block a great customer experience in our stores and over the phone. We still have work to do, but have eliminated fees, made it easier for our front lines to solve customer problems quickly and with one touch and changed policies that needed to be improved or removed all together.
What does CX mean to C Spire and how has it evolved in recent years with various CX initiatives?
Hays: Since our beginning as a wireless provider in 1988, we have put our customers at the center of everything we do. In the infancy days of wireless, we were the first operator to offer free incoming calls. At that time, consumers only used their cell phones for emergencies, but we knew that they could be getting a lot more out of our product. Free incoming calls helped customers to realize that reality. We were the first to offer unlimited – beating competitors by a decade - not because of price, but because we believe customers shouldn’t have to worry about price.
Before that, consumers had to worry about what time of day it was (nights and weekends) and even what carrier the person they were calling was using (mobile-to-mobile). We also were the first carrier to offer unlimited text messaging. As a result, our customers talked and texted far more than the industry average – they got more value out of our product. Later, we helped our customer base adopt smartphones much faster than the industry by being the first to price smartphone plans where consumers could afford them for the entire family and by setting up Discover Centers in our stores where we had full-time staff to help them learn how to use their smartphone.
Today, we still set up customer emails and help them with other questions about apps and technology on their devices. We have a great photo of a C Spire team member showing a local ladies bridge club how to use Facebook. We’ve always had amazing people helping our customers in our stores and over the phone. With 2.0, we’re working on the back-office processes behind them to make the experience even better. As we continue with 2.1 and beyond, we are getting even more sophisticated in how we design the customer experience at a very detailed and completely customer centric level.
What does customer loyalty mean to C Spire and how has this definition evolved in recent years?
Hays: At C Spire, we understand that we work for our customers – they are responsible for our livelihood. In fact, with the launch of CI 2.0, we rolled out a new ad campaign based on this idea where we illustrate how our people work for our customers in delivering plans, Max Range LTE (our latest major network enhancement) and providing them with the latest technology.
However, focusing on our customers and a deep appreciation for their loyalty has never been about an ad campaign, it’s been engrained in our culture from the very beginning and continues to be at the core of who our company is and what we stand for today.
Do you see CX as the key differentiator as far as a competitive edge?
Hays: Absolutely. For example, when we were launching our Home Services offering a couple of years ago, we refused to set up appointments in windows and insisted that our technicians arrive at their appointments five minutes early. There were many naysayers who had been in this line of business for years who believed this level of service commitment was impossible, but we worked hard to deliver on this because it was important that our customers not have to wait on us and it was the right thing to do.
This approach speaks volumes to our employees and our customers about our service commitment. It also shows that we respect our customers and that we value their time. Even though we launched a 1 Gigabit per second fiber internet connection in places where it had never existed before, we were surprised that the overwhelming positive response was more about our “blue shoe crew” than even the highly sought after ultra-fast internet speed. Today, you can get Gigabit internet access in more places, but you can’t get the “blue shoe crew” anywhere else. That’s differentiation that can’t be undone with the next big thing.