Mobile providers
Leppik cites Sprint as an example of a company that has made customer-service improvements -- and the difficulty a company can have trying to maintain that edge.
"Sprint historically has had very poor customer service," he says. "At the beginning of 2010, they made a decision that they were going to improve their service level, and we saw their numbers go way up."
Sprint made impressive service gains during 2010, moving from the bottom of Vocalabs' rankings in 2009 to being statistically tied for first place in many key metrics.
"They were still kind of mediocre, but compared to where they had been, they were doing a whole lot better," Leppik says. "But then, in 2011, I don't know what their thinking was exactly, but it was very obvious that they had turned their focus on customer service to other things, and the numbers went right back down. That's an example of what happened when customer service is a flavor of the month."
Leppik stresses that he has no firsthand knowledge of Sprint's internal strategy decisions regarding customer support. The company, however, appears to be making the common mistake of treating this aspect of customer service as a "project, not process."
"I think a lot of this goes back to the view of customer service as infrastructure," he says. "You build infrastructure, and then it's there and you don't have to keep building it every year. But customer service really is not infrastructure. In a lot of companies it is the only time a customer actually communicates directly with the company. That has far more power on that customer's perception than anything else the company can really do.
"The thing about customer service, as a strategy, is that you can't do it for a short period," he adds. "It is something that can be very powerful, but it takes time to change the overall perception of a company. It takes a lot of repeated positive customer experiences. It takes a lot of time for that word-of-mouth shift. If you are looking at this quarter's financial results, it's not always obvious that the investment is paying off."
In October research, Vocalabs found that AT&T recovered in the quality of customer service, while Sprint continued to lose ground.
During the three months ending Sept. 30, 66% of AT&T customers surveyed were "very satisfied" with the experience, up from 56% in the prior period, while 53% of Sprint customers gave the experience their top rating, down from 64%.
This compares with the 55% percent of T-Mobile and 60% of Verizon customers who were similarly satisfied.
The anecdotal reviews of customers, positive or negative, are crucial.
"One negative experience has a lot more of a powerful effect than multiple positive experiences," Leppik says. "You have to have a long-term, sustained effort, and it can be like turning around a battleship. One positive experience for one customer is good, but what you need to have is multiple positive experiences for all customers over time, so they come to see that the company is treating them consistently well and it is not just getting the right person on the right day. The positive effect of this is that once you have done that, you build up a store of good will, and there's a little more leeway for making mistakes."
Isolated event and company announcements can sometimes have a temporary influence on how successful a customer service approach is. Looking at a recent drop in satisfaction levels for AT&T, Leppik suspects that the now-abandoned merger with T-Mobile may have been a culprit.
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