European telecommunications companies are moving away from price-based competition to create unique identities in the market, and they’re embracing Customer Experience Management (CEM) as a key differentiator. But, according to a new survey released by Comarch, there are major differences between where the companies are today and where they would like to be in the future.
Though the majority of telecoms claim their companies place CEM at the heart of their operations, 43% of them have no integrated CEM program in place and 23.5% have no established timeframe for the introduction of such a program, the study shows.
Comarch released the results of a survey conducted with European telecoms that aimed to measure the aspirations and ideals associated with Customer Experience Management against the market reality. The survey revealed there is a gap between the aspirations and reality: The survey was conducted for Comarch by analyst firm Telecoms.com Intelligence.
Here are some other key findings from the survey:
More than 75% of respondents said that their company has a strategy in place that puts CEM at the heart of end-to-end operations for all departments
23.5% have no established timeframe for the introduction of such a program
11.1% of them did not know whether their company had an end-to-end CEM strategy in place
27.5% of respondents said their companies are only applying CEM strategies to enterprise and high spend customers
29.4% claims CEM is only limited to quality of service
49% of the respondents admit to facing inability to align their technical view of the network with the influence on customer experience
One of the revelations of the survey was how frequently respondents selected the ‘I don’t know’ option. The survey uncovered some fundamental gaps in awareness: 7.1% of respondents did not know how to categorize their company’s involvement in CEM; 10.3% of respondents did not know which C-level executive has ultimate responsibility for CEM in their organization; and 11.1% of respondents did not know whether their company had an end-to-end CEM strategy in place
To provide a seamless customer experience, operators need to gather and analyze as much information on their customers as possible and translate it into visible actions that can directly influence the satisfaction of their clients, Piotr Machnik, VP Product Management and Marketing at Comarch, said in a press release.
Machnik added that data such as billing, service/call usage, customer behavior and profile are no longer enough to understand what level of customer experience is being delivered to each subscriber, and how to improve it. It’s clear, he added, that companies need the information from network management systems.