Poor quality customer care is the most important reason for changing their mobile service provider: survey on markets across Australia, India, Indonesia, Turkey, South Africa, the UK and USA reveals

WARC, 21 February 2014

GLOBAL: Almost one quarter of mobile subscribers are planning to change their provider in the next 12 months with poor customer care among the most common reasons for doing so according to a new report.

A global survey for Tektronix Communications, the telecoms intelligence business, polled 3,500 mobile subscribers across Australia, India, Indonesia, Turkey, South Africa, the UK and USA for the report, Who Cares, Wins – Customer Service Perceptions and Churn. This found that 24% of respondents intended to switch supplier in the coming year.

In addition, another quarter of respondents said they had changed their provider in the last 18 months, while another 42% said stating that they were at best undecided on changing providers.

Fully 30% of consumers cited poor quality customer care as the most important reason for changing their mobile service provider, with over half stating it as one of the key reasons for switching. Other factors included poor value for money (38%) and network quality (34%).

Lyn Cantor, president of Tektronix Communications noted that poor customer care was affecting KPIs and increasing the risk of churn. "The greatest threat to superior customer care and customer experience lies in the siloed organizational structures and fragmented intelligence that exists within most operator businesses," he said.

Speed of response was a particular issue for consumers, with 69% expecting to reach a customer care agent quickly and 64% placing an emphasis on how quickly their query was resolved.

It is an area being addressed by EE, the UK's first 4G network. A report by regulator Ofcom at the end of 2013 found that EE was the most complained about mobile provider, as it focused on building its network ahead of customer satisfaction.

But it has said that "delivering great service" will be a priority for 2014 and, to that end, is bringing 1,000 call centre jobs back to the UK.

An EE spokesman told Marketing Week that having UK customer service agents speaking to UK customers delivered better productivity and results which should lead to an improvement in customer satisfaction levels.

Data sourced from GoMo News; Marketing Week; additional content by Warc staff

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