What's your strategy for balancing customer expectations and service quality in telecommunications?
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— The LinkedIn Team
Customer expectations and service quality are two crucial factors that influence customer satisfaction and loyalty in the telecommunications industry. However, balancing them can be challenging, as customers demand more value, speed, reliability, and personalization, while service providers face increasing competition, complexity, and costs. How can you design and deliver a service strategy that meets or exceeds customer expectations and maintains high service quality? Here are some tips to help you.
The first step to balance customer expectations and service quality is to understand who your customers are, what they need, want, and value, and how they perceive and evaluate your service. You can use various methods to gather customer feedback, such as surveys, interviews, focus groups, social media, or analytics. You can also segment your customers based on their characteristics, preferences, and behaviors, and create personas that represent their goals, motivations, and pain points. By understanding your customers, you can tailor your service offerings, communication, and delivery to their specific needs and expectations.
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Matheus Joaquim Cofferri
Diretor na Cloud DC | Conselheiro Consultivo em Telecomunicações | Redes neutras | 5G | Provedores de Internet | Datacenter | Tecnologia | Top Telecommunications Voice
To enhance the understanding of your customers, consider implementing advanced data analytics and customer relationship management (CRM) systems. By analyzing data on customer behavior, preferences, and feedback, you can gain deeper insights, identify patterns, and proactively tailor your services to individual customer needs. This data-driven approach allows for more personalized and effective service delivery.
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Athman Mwanjala
Branch Manager Cfao Motors Kenya Ltd.
One thing i have found helpful is to listen to your customers its through listening that you find your solutions by tailor making to suites your customers needs. This can be articulated through there behaviours, goals, preference, value and end goal. All the above can be gathered through different media(surveys, face to face,social media etc) depending on what you are looking at achieving.
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The next step is to define your service standards, which are the measurable criteria that specify the level of quality and performance that you aim to provide to your customers. Your service standards should be aligned with your business objectives, customer expectations, and industry benchmarks. They should also be SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. For example, you can set service standards for your network availability, speed, coverage, security, resolution time, response time, or customer satisfaction. By defining your service standards, you can communicate your value proposition, monitor your service quality, and identify areas for improvement.
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Matheus Joaquim Cofferri
Diretor na Cloud DC | Conselheiro Consultivo em Telecomunicações | Redes neutras | 5G | Provedores de Internet | Datacenter | Tecnologia | Top Telecommunications Voice
In addition to defining service standards, consider incorporating continuous feedback loops from customers to adapt and refine these standards over time. This dynamic approach ensures that service quality remains aligned with evolving customer expectations and technological advancements.
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Your staff are the key to delivering your service standards and creating positive customer experiences. Therefore, you need to train and empower them to have the skills, knowledge, and tools to perform their tasks effectively and efficiently. You can provide them with regular training on your products, services, policies, procedures, and best practices. You can also empower them to make decisions, solve problems, and handle complaints in a timely and professional manner. By training and empowering your staff, you can enhance their competence, confidence, and commitment to your service quality and customer satisfaction.
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Matheus Joaquim Cofferri
Diretor na Cloud DC | Conselheiro Consultivo em Telecomunicações | Redes neutras | 5G | Provedores de Internet | Datacenter | Tecnologia | Top Telecommunications Voice
A new dimension to consider is fostering a culture of continuous learning and improvement within your team. Encourage ongoing self-improvement and the sharing of best practices among team members. This approach can lead to more innovative solutions, proactive issue resolution, and enhanced customer experiences.
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Quality assurance is the process of ensuring that your service delivery meets or exceeds your service standards and customer expectations. You can implement quality assurance processes to check, measure, and improve your service quality at every stage of the service cycle. For example, you can use quality control techniques to test and verify your network performance, equipment, and software. You can also use quality management systems to collect, analyze, and report on your service quality indicators, such as error rates, downtime, latency, throughput, or customer feedback. By implementing quality assurance processes, you can prevent or correct errors, defects, or failures that may affect your service quality and customer satisfaction.
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Matheus Joaquim Cofferri
Diretor na Cloud DC | Conselheiro Consultivo em Telecomunicações | Redes neutras | 5G | Provedores de Internet | Datacenter | Tecnologia | Top Telecommunications Voice
Incorporating customer feedback loops is an additional strategy to enhance quality assurance. Actively seek and integrate feedback from customers throughout the service cycle, addressing their concerns and preferences promptly. This customer-centric approach can result in more personalized, high-quality services that align with customer expectations and satisfaction.
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The final step is to seek continuous improvement, which is the process of finding new ways to enhance your service quality and customer satisfaction. You can seek continuous improvement by reviewing your service standards and quality assurance processes regularly and making adjustments based on your results, feedback, and changing customer needs. You can also use innovation methods, such as brainstorming, prototyping, or testing, to develop new or improved products, services, or processes that add value, convenience, or differentiation to your customers. By seeking continuous improvement, you can keep up with customer expectations, service quality, and market trends.
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Matheus Joaquim Cofferri
Diretor na Cloud DC | Conselheiro Consultivo em Telecomunicações | Redes neutras | 5G | Provedores de Internet | Datacenter | Tecnologia | Top Telecommunications Voice
Implementing a robust feedback loop from customer interactions and experiences can bring a fresh perspective. By actively seeking customer input and insights, you can identify areas for continuous improvement. Regularly surveying customers, conducting usability testing, or hosting focus groups can uncover valuable suggestions for enhancing service quality and customer satisfaction.
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Andrew wekwanya
Parts sales consultant at Mobikey Truck and Bus Ltd
The best way to handle your clients and reduce their expectations is by frequent communication with your clients either face to face,emails,phone calls or any other means that keeps your in constant linkage with your clients to help in understanding their needs. Throught the above you will be able to develop a systematic solution that to the needs they have.sometimes if need be ,you can create a room in their warehouses where you can store your goods for their usage and only take inventory of them on either weekly or monthly basis and invoice whatever your would have consumed. That will reduce stress of your clients always asking you for solutions to their daily needs on parts or other products they may need on daily basis.
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