Don’t Let Smartphones Increase Your Contact Center Costs – Part 1

By Scot Harris

One hour and thirty-five minutes. That’s the amount of time that my friend spent on the phone with a customer service representative from a major wireless service provider trying to determine why and how her smartphone had scrambled her contacts. Apparently she had received a call that displayed the caller on her phone as “Mom,” but when she answered it was someone she had been avoiding for weeks, for good reason.

The issue here is that it wasn’t just a problem for her; it was also a huge problem for the wireless provider who had to deal with an increasingly angry and frustrated customer that consumed ninety-five minutes and occupied multiple agents. Multiply her problem by the millions of people now using smartphones and you can see how this becomes a major headache for wireless service providers.

From email, GPS navigation, multimedia to gaming, e-books, mobile commerce and Internet, we now rely on our smartphones. Having a smartphone is more than just the “in thing;” it’s becoming almost as essential as having a personal computer. In fact, having a smartphone is like having a small computer with you 24×7. And, based on the tremendous value they bring, smartphone growth is projected to double by 2014, when 60% of all mobile phones will be smartphones, according to Juniper Research.

The good news is that smartphones generate approximately twice the revenue of feature phones. The bad news is that smartphone users also call contact centers twice as much as feature phone customers, with an average handle time of almost twice that of feature phone customers. This situation results in significantly more support than traditional mobile phones required. It’s not that surprising, given that the issues pertaining to smartphones are much more complex than traditional mobile phones, with support needed for their operating systems, network, software, and hardware issues. With projected annual growth rates for smartphones of almost 25% through 2014 (according to IDC), wireless service providers will see significantly increased call volume and average handle time, potentially costing millions of dollars per year in increased contact center costs.

So what can wireless service providers do to prevent their customer service support costs from undermining the revenue uptake of smartphones?

Start by staffing the contact center with customer service agents who are trained and experienced to handle these types of calls efficiently and effectively. Offer incentives and provide career growth opportunities to attract experienced applicants with advanced problem-solving skills and technical savvy — a much different hiring profile than that of a traditional contact center specialist — to handle calls related to smartphones.

Even so, having the right agents in place is only a start. A comprehensive program that leverages best practices across technology and telecommunications verticals is the best way forward. This approach combines enhanced training and tools to create a contact center experience specifically designed to support complex device issues. Tomorrow, I’ll post another blog that will share additional detail about how such an experience would work.

Scot Harris is a senior director of market strategy in Convergys’ Customer Management business, responsible for the Communications vertical.  He can be reached at scot.harris@convergys.com.

Tags: Agent training, Customer experience, Customer Satisfaction, Customer Service, Mobile, Technology, Telecommunications