Empowering customers through self-help apps benefits the customers and helps the operator to reduce customer care cost a study by Mahindra Comviva, a mobility solutions provider has revealed.
There is also the potential for an augmented customer engagement, provided it is a personalized and secure interaction. By developing a rich interaction suite through the mobile self-service app, a telco can gain real time feedback and deliver tailored offers to customers. Talking about the customers, with a well integrated self service app they can resolve their issues within one session without having to wait for a 24 hour process time line.
The study conducted by Ovum Consulting, captures the benefits of Self Service Apps to mobile network operators (MNO) by helping in retention and growth through enhanced customer experience and engagement. It also explains the current market scenarios and challenges that need to be addressed in order to place a successful strategy for customer relationship management (CRM) in place.
Self Service applications allow customers to manage their mobile account transactions real time from their individual phones. Customers can even raise their own trouble ticket or request and provide MNOs with real time customer feedback. The study estimates that 80 percent of calls to call centers are related to simple queries.
Africa, Asia and Latin America emerged as the untapped markets for such apps. In such growing economies, MNOs can deepen relationship with customers by providing them a tool like self-service apps. In a fiercely competitive market, low engagement level contributes to high customer churn.
Self-service apps provide MNOs a branded presence on the customer’s device, and a channel to have a continuous personalized dialog with customers. A positive customer experience via a self-service app generates repeat usage, loyalty and advocacy.
Commenting on the significance of mobile self service apps, Pawan S. Kulkarni, Head of Consumer Value Solutions, Mahindra Comviva said, “An intensely competitive market and evolving consumer need calls for operators to offer more than just products. Customer relationship management becomes a vital tool for increasing service satisfaction score. The study captures some crucial points to help MNOs address current challenges with greater efficiency and offering value added customer offerings.”
In terms of creating new application, the problem especially arises in mobile first economies where mobile device models are attached to pre- and postpaid contracts on 2G and 3G networks which make it difficult for developing and embedding self service apps on handsets.
On the other hand, emerging economies which have poor literacy rates present a challenge in adoption of adoption of such apps. Here, it is important to create a simple intuitive user interface (UI) with one touch options and minimum number of menus and click through pages. MNOs will have to find ways to overcome such issues in order to create opportunities for advanced and rich interactions.