Stop Your Customers From Disconnecting

To build and maintain loyalty, mobile phone companies need to focus on meeting fundamental human needs.

Sarah Loader, Associate Director, CX, Ipsos

The recent UK CX Report by Ipsos and Engage Business Media shows

• Mobile phone companies are failing to meet expectations for 16% of customers – almost twice as many as for the other six industries studied.
• This is a challenge for operators, but also an opportunity to gain a competitive edge by addressing the gap between customer expectation and service delivery.

The mobile sector is also delivering the most positive customer experiences (49% versus 42% overall) and the most negative customer experiences (23% versus 15% overall) across multiple touchpoints and channels. This polarisation suggests inherent strengths in the mobile customer experience, as well as opportunities for improvement.

The research shows how it is no longer enough to simply deliver functional services: brands need to be meeting customers’ human needs in a way that builds trust and demonstrates value. Using Ipsos’ Forces of Customer Experience framework, it measures how companies are delivering against the six fundamental needs that underpin relationships with customers: Certainty, Control, Fair Treatment, Status, Enjoyment and Belonging.

• Strong performance on problem resolution reaps rewards in terms of greater connection with customers, with more customers experiencing each Force, especially Enjoyment, Belonging and Status.
• Only 1 in 5 customers in the mobile sector are ‘Very satisfied’ with their issue resolution, and the industry suffers more than others from unresolved customer issues.

Pricing is the single biggest bugbear for mobile customers, with 22% mentioning it in their feedback. Mid-contract price rises that exceed inflation impact negatively on their sense of Control, Fair Treatment and Status. As one customer put it: ‘Price increases…didn’t make me feel valued’. When customer expectations are exceeded, all the Forces are felt much more strongly, and Status – making customers feel valued – is where we see the biggest positive increases have taken place.

Three things that mobile providers can be doing right now:

• Revisit customer experience and service maps to remediate problems, identify quick wins, and create opportunities for enhancing service throughout the life of the customer’s contract. How can you offset the negative impact of price rises? How can you increase the number of issues being resolved?
• Ensure that prices rises are handled in a way that addresses customers’ needs for Fair Treatment and Status, such as offering better deals and rewards to loyal customers. For example, giffgaff™ refers to customers as ‘members’ and will sometimes treat them to free data when they exceed their allowance.
• Use the Forces of Customer Experience framework to identify where and how to elevate your emotional connection with customers, increasing the likelihood of exceeding their expectations. The commercial benefit is reduced churn and greater loyalty: customers whose expectations are exceeded are much more likely to say they’ll continue to use a brand (87%) than those who have simply had their expectations met (62%).

For more information on the UK CX research, download the report here, or contact Ipsos at sarah.loader@ipsos.com