 | Issue: | Latin America IV 1998 |
| Article no.: | 10 | |
| Topic: | The New Era of Customer Care | |
| Author: | Michael Malone | |
| Title: | Senior Director, Network Engineering Services | |
| Organisation: | Motorola Cellular Infrastructure Group, USA | |
| PDF size: | 32KB |
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Article abstract
As today’s wireless systems integrate more functions and features, they also become more complicated to manage. In today’s wireless industry, caring for customers means far more than selling superior systems, products and services. It entails building long-term relationships with customers and demonstrating commitment after the sale. Motorola believes the ability to communicate with customers and to proactively act on their input will not only enhance their experience with new products and services, but also ensure its continued success in the wireless market.
Full Article
As today’s wireless systems integrate more functions and features, they also become more complicated to manage. This puts increased pressure on a vendor’s customer service teams, who must help clients learn to use, maintain and troubleshoot increasingly complex new equipment and services. Unfortunately, this integration has impacted the nature of most customer care. In today’s wireless industry, caring for customers means far more than selling superior systems, products and services. It entails building long-term relationships with customers and demonstrating commitment after the sale. Focusing on the Customer During the early 1990s, the installed base of cellular subscribers expanded at a growth rate of more than 50% per year. In this environment, cellular manufacturers and service providers focused on securing market share as a top priority. Gaining an early footprint in a market meant years of solid growth for an operator; with infrastructure providers teaming up with the operators to build networks as quickly as possible. Motorola’s Cellular Infrastructure Group (CIG) thrived in this era by providing operators with quality infrastructure products. As the market matured, wireless carriers consolidated and became more influential. They migrated from buying parts, or components and subsystems, to purchasing a network solution of integrated hardware and software. To accommodate this new customer-driven market model, infrastructure vendors such as Motorola CIG began focusing its attention on improving processes for serving its new and existing customers. For Motorola CIG, this inspired a renewed focus on intimate customer relationships. Customer Care Programs Motorola CIG’s customer care program borrows heavily from the manufacturing quality programs for which the company is famous. Total Customer Satisfaction, the philosophy of our customer care program, is based on our commitment to provide the best support services in the world. We engage customers in a continuous dialogue to determine what they care about most in order to best tailor and improve our products and services. We empower our customer care teams with better knowledge of systems and grant them more flexibility and creativity in addressing customer problems. In addition to providing leading services, Motorola CIG invests heavily in continually improving our products to ensure Total Customer Satisfaction. For example, we have allocated a tremendous amount of engineering talent to developing and improving our wireless switching technologies. Our product investments are resulting in rapid and substantial advancements in the equipment we provide our customers. Knowledge Dissemination A key tenet of Motorola CIG’s customer care program is knowledge dissemination, a decentralised approach, to supporting our customers. Knowledge dissemination is the practice of instructing regional field personnel in equipment maintenance and issue prevention. This practice removes the onus from centralised, ‘strike force’ support teams who are not customer intimate. Motorola CIG operates under the criterion that it will not be considered successful unless the regional customer care teams – the front-line customer interfaces – are successful. To help field engineers in regional support centres keep customer systems operating at peak efficiency, Motorola CIG has developed the Preventative Audit Program, which trains field personnel and customers in quality control procedures and advanced maintenance techniques. By providing information and preventive maintenance, Motorola CIG has reduced service calls and improved customer satisfaction scores. More importantly, customers are benefiting from improvements in equipment uptime, resulting in improved product reliability ratings among customers. Improvements To better distribute knowledge and excellence among the various teams responsible for customer care, Motorola CIG encourages job rotation among work units. Product support engineers frequently take assignments in development or training. Former field engineers working on product development teams galvanise design efforts with invaluable input gained from years of working directly with customers. Design engineers serving on regional customer care teams enrich field support with their in-depth understanding of Motorola CIG’s products. Furthermore, the support centres in Illinois and Cork, Ireland share the best practices among customer account teams around the world. The net result of Motorola CIG’s cross-pollination program is that customers ultimately receive higher levels of front-line support. In addition to instituting programs for improving product reliability, Motorola CIG recently introduced new practices to simplify and speed customer communication, especially in responding to customer inquiries and support requests. The Customer Solutions Management Team assigns individual customer care representatives to Motorola CIG customers. The customer care representative offers a consistent, accountable single point-of-contact with whom customers can work to resolve problems. Customer care representatives track trouble tickets and keep their clients apprised of Motorola CIG’s progress in resolving problems. The customer care representatives also give Motorola CIG a valuable means for regularly communicating and strengthening relationships with customers. Call Centres Another important part of the program is the Customer Care Call Centre, a 24-hour resource staffed by customer care directors who field and guide calls. Through the introduction of call directors, Motorola CIG streamlined the routing of field calls for assistance. The call centre is now lauded by customers as a potent ally for expediting service requests. The one-on-one guidance offered by our customer care directors is becoming ever more important as the wireless systems become more complex. Customer care call directors, trained to be experts in navigating the Motorola CIG support organisation, help smaller customers quickly identify and get in touch with the appropriate support engineer for specific equipment questions. By fostering active communication with customers, Motorola CIG has improved customers’ assessments of response times and the ability to follow through on commitments. Customers have commented that there is now more concern for helping them work through their issues. Motorola CIG’s customer care teams are seeing evidence of the progress in providing customers with improved products and support services. A series of customer satisfaction surveys conducted by an independent source showed a 38% increase in technical support during 1997 and more than 7% improvement in 1998. The data is being used to identify customer care priorities. For instance, the teams follow up with customers on survey results. When a rating that is less than very satisfied on a particular service category is received, the teams contact the customer to understand the issue and take action to provide better service in the future. In instances where a very satisfactory rating is received the teams also contact the customer to determine what went well, so as to replicate the experience. Summary As today’s wireless systems become more complex, engaging customers in continuous dialogue will become even more important. Although increasingly advanced systems offer valuable new features for cellular operators and subscribers, they also pose new challenges in providing the level of customer support needed to deploy and maintain such systems. Listening to customers is the best way to ensure that new customer care challenges are met. Customer dialogues also enable vendors to balance expectations, identify ways to add more value in customer service and anticipate customers’ future needs. Motorola CIG believes the ability to communicate with customers and to pro-actively act on their input will not only enhance their experience with new products and services, but also will ensure continued success in the wireless market.
