Xerox, WDS Advise Mobile Carriers on Keeping Fickle Subscribers Loyal

By Michelle Maisto

“What we do is handle a boatload of transactions that our customers would never like to have in the first place,” said David Ffoulkes-Jones, CEO of WDS. On the upside, customer care offers an opportunity to “track experience, tie that to data centers and know whether there’s going to be a break in the relationship.”

“There is no better source of information than the call center, but most agents don’t know how to harvest it,” said Doug Overton, vice president of analysis and consulting at WDS. Xerox’s solution enables analysts to look at the various ways people use to describe the same problem. Such information helps customer service agents resolve issues more quickly—and more satisfyingly, for both the agent and the customer.

Satisfaction isn’t a guarantee of retention, reports WDS, which found 19 percent of all “highly satisfied” mobile customers in the United States are at risk of switching. These “mercenaries,” as WDS calls them, “chase low prices or buy to pursue a trend. It takes effort to keep this segment satisfied but they show little, to no, loyalty.”

Customer intent to switch rises in the months just before a service contract ends. A customer who has been with a carrier for less than two years is 1.3 times more likely to switch than a customer with six years of “tenure.”

WDS found that while it’s vital that customers feel they’re getting good value for their money, even 36 percent of those who say they’re “Highly Satisfied” and feel they get “Excellent” or “Very Good” value for their money are at risk of switching.

Carriers ask about service reliability and customer care, but they need to measure how valued customers feel and if they’re being “rewarded” for their loyalty. “If a customer doesn’t feel valued … they are 2.5x more likely to be a switch-risk.”

WDS calls customers who say they’re “somewhat likely” or “likely” to switch carriers in the next 12 months “swing voters.” Their actions can be accelerated with the wrong activity or reserved with the right ones. Better network coverage elsewhere could lead 57 percent of them to defect.

The higher the tolerance, the greater the loyalty. A majority of customers (59 percent) with high tolerance weren’t tempted by a 10 percent savings offer, but when the savings grew to 20 percent, only 38 percent remained “unlikely” to churn.

Despite operators’ efforts, the greater the number of calls to customer care, the higher the risk of churn, says WDS. Among customers found to be a switch risk, 48 percent had interacted with support at least once.

While some CRM solutions can identify those will low-satisfaction rates, a carrier should be able to identify further distinctions within the group to make smart use of their resources. “The data makes clear that no single satisfaction measure is enough to fully understand the loyalty profile of a customer,” says WDS.