(Image Credit: iStockPhoto/Petar Chernaev)
The telecommunications market is evolving rapidly. Not only have communication service providers (CSPs) changed how they deliver services, but customers’ expectations and perceptions have shifted as well. Delivering a seamless, consistent customer experience across multiple channels is now a top priority for operators competing in this dynamic environment.
Customer Experience Management (CEM), sometimes called CXM, is a discipline that uses the most relevant insights about customers and their behavior to drive appropriate actions and strategies across the business. It then measures the results to refine both the insights and the actions. Effective CEM helps companies anticipate customer needs, personalize interactions, and resolve issues quickly to improve satisfaction and loyalty.
CEM differs fundamentally from traditional Customer Relationship Management (CRM). CRM systems—around for more than two decades—primarily focused on improving internal processes to support customers, reduce costs, and increase satisfaction. That was largely an inside-out approach to managing customer relationships.
By contrast, CEM takes an outside-in perspective. It is proactive and often anticipatory: initiating contact, delivering relevant content, preemptively resolving problems, and recognizing customer preferences—frequently before the customer raises a concern or even realizes their need.
For customer-focused industries such as telecommunications, CEM is more vital than it was a decade ago. Several trends underline its importance:
- Operators continually introduce new plans, services, features, and technologies, all available with just a click. CEM teams concentrate on optimizing the customer experience to reduce churn and increase lifetime value. It is widely accepted that acquiring a new customer costs significantly more than retaining an existing one.
- Social media amplifies individual customer experiences. One dissatisfied customer’s negative post can spread quickly and have a disproportionate impact on reputation and business outcomes. Managing customer experience proactively helps limit these reputational risks.
For CSPs, the overall customer experience is the sum of experiences across multiple internal domains—network performance, billing, sales, customer care, and digital channels all contribute to how customers perceive the operator.
Research from customer experience firms shows that telecom operators often score low on Net Promoter Score (NPS). Low NPS indicates that relatively few customers feel positively about their operator. Dissatisfied customers are more likely to churn and, even if they remain customers, they typically generate higher support costs through complaints, calls to customer service, and billing disputes. A well-implemented CEM program addresses these pain points by identifying drivers of dissatisfaction and taking targeted corrective actions.
Customer Experience Index (CEI)
Customer experience varies across subscribers based on plan type, usage patterns, billing accuracy, and other factors. To manage experience effectively, organizations must understand this range and weigh different factors by their influence. The TM Forum describes a globally recognized Customer Experience Index (CEI) to quantify individual customer experience with an operator. CEI typically draws on multiple inputs—service quality, customer interactions, billing and pricing fairness, and the overall relationship—each contributing to a composite score.
Among the inputs that shape CEI, mobile network coverage and performance often have the largest impact. Network failures, poor coverage, or inconsistent performance directly affect customers’ daily experience and quickly erode trust in an operator.
To improve experience, operators are adopting new methods to monitor network health and measure the performance of the services customers actually use. Moving from traditional Network Operations Centers (NOC) to Security and Operations Centers (SOC), applying predictive analytics, introducing innovative billing models, capturing Voice of the Customer (VoC) feedback, and implementing proactive customer call-back programs are all components of a robust CEM strategy in telecom.
Conclusion
CEM refocuses organizations on customers at a time when customer power has never been greater. While customer centricity is not new, the consequences of failing to address customer issues are more severe today, especially in telecommunications where loyalty is rapidly eroding. Instead of primarily investing in new customer acquisition, a strong CEM program emphasizes improving the experience of existing customers—reducing churn, lowering support costs, and strengthening long-term relationships.
Do you think CEM is more important than ever? Share your thoughts in the comments.