Contrary to conventional wisdom, Top Gun did not engender the concept of having a “need for speed.” Customer service did.
And when wireless customers are not able to have their service inquiry resolved on the first contact, thus having to re-contact their carrier and spend additional time on the phone, customer satisfaction plummets.
According to the freshly published findings from two new reports from J.D. Power, speed has never been more important in providing customer service to wireless subscribers.
All told, research shows that:
- The re-contact rate among full-service wireless customers who contact their carrier by phone has risen to 23 percentage points from 17 percentage points in 2011, a 6 percentage point increase in two years.
- Among full-service wireless customers who resolve their issue during a single phone call, satisfaction is 846 (on a 1,000-point scale) and declines to 662 when problem resolution takes two or more calls.
- When customer service hold times are less than 5 minutes, overall customer care satisfaction is 843, compared with 603 when hold times are 15 minutes or longer.
- The likelihood of full-service wireless customers switching carriers increases from 16 percent when their service call lasts less than 5 minutes to 30 percent when their call lasts 15 minutes or more.
“It’s imperative that wireless service carriers improve their ability to resolve customer issues in one contact and reduce the number of service channels customers need to visit to address their problem,” insists Kirk Parsons, senior director of telecommunications at J.D. Power. “Keeping the service call to five minutes or less may reduce overall call volume to the carrier, thereby improving customer satisfaction and loyalty.”
