Ericsson urges CSPs to be less touchy

Telecoms vendor Ericsson has been looking into how CSPs interact with their customers and reckons they take too long to get stuff done.

It’s a good day for CSP top tips and it seems likely that a healthy proportion of subscribers would agree that their interactions could be significantly improved. While operators have already identified customer service as a priority, it seems progress may not have been as rapid as they’d hoped.

According to Ericsson’s Consumer & IndustryLab Insight Report, a typical interaction between subscriber and CSP takes 2.2 attempts and 4.1 days to complete. While we may have become conditioned to such glacial progress when trying to get things done, there seems to be a clear opportunity for CSPs to pleasantly surprise their customers by not being rubbish.

“Consumers believe telecom service providers treat touchpoints like isolated interactions,” said Pernilla Jonsson, Head of Ericsson Consumer & IndustryLab. “Siloed focus means they miss the bigger picture. Interestingly, telecom service providers could leapfrog one-click and move from multiple-click to zero-touch by deploying future technologies in their customer offerings. The zero-touch customer experience report shows that zero-touch experiences are now an expectation of their customers.”

While it’s hardly surprising that a telecoms vendor should recommend their customers spend more money on new technology, Ericsson may also have a point. The proposed technological solution involves lashings of artificial intelligence and analytics. This mainly involves anticipating their every need and satisfying it in advance and the ‘zero touch’ thing seems to refer to alternative UIs such as voice.