No need to hire Ardent Advocates, when you can earn them!

Meet Mr. Adams. He is the CEO of a mobile phone operator company – a telecom company serving many happy subscribers, until the recent past. These subscribers had suddenly gone really modern (they want the latest in everything), moody (sometimes they want to be known or seen and then they insist on privacy), demanding (anything that they want is something that they need) and talkative (Didn’t they just talk to friends and family at parties or at the park? The entire world hears their story now!)

In the situation at hand, Mr. Adams was perplexed – what just happened to his aptly strategized business and satisfied customers? He has always detected, reacted and planned to prevent his subscribers from moving away from his company. So, you notice this about Mr. Adams that he’s a good listener! He listened very carefully – from subscribers, co-workers, employees and other staff – where a problem was budding or had sprouted already, and he took proper steps and assigned people to nip it there and then.
Mr. Adams realized that to survive and win in todays competitive and highly differentiated business arena, he needed to create tribes of loyal advocates – and not just contented or indifferent subscribers. These subscribers don’t want to be just satisfied anymore, what they want is a complete journey of overwhelming experiences – and that’s exactly what they’ll get!

Thanks to social networks, price comparison sites, and online reviews, any typical customer has a 360 degree view of any product and service and has mounted expectations as well. Generally, the provision of telecom – like gas, electricity and insurance – has been commoditized which makes the above mentioned ‘differentiation’ a difficult move.

Because the Telco Industry isn’t really leading the Customer Experience Walk, it can learn from others that have loyal customers converting into ardent advocates quite rapidly. To achieve this loyalty beyond reason, Telcos will need to work on their customer satisfaction scores – by doing absolutely nothing wrong and then doing certain things that are awesome!

Although many telecoms are working in the right direction, like the Netherlands based mobile operator Simpel, Turkey’s Turkcell, Belgium’s Belgacom, Dubai’s Du. They are on to winning the loyalty of customers with their simplicity, creativity, charismatic and disruptive advertising, exceptional and innovative services, and the element of surprise that inspires the passion of advocacy. It’s a mouthful of agile actions and witty strategies.

Now that Mr. Adams understands the importance of turning customer’s dissatisfaction into a delightful experience and memorable journey, his troubles are over. Many others like Mr. Adams have morphed out of their comfort zone of plain business running and notched it up for a differentiated effect.
Although, it might take some years to implement the operational and cultural changes required, but the result is worth the wait. If Mr. Adams keeps it up, forming that emotional bond with the customers and differentiating from his competitors (with the customer’s point of view), word will spread like fire – customers will grow (and grow happier) and revenues will rise (and make him happier!) and the cycle will go on!
So, if you meet Mr. Adams now, you’ll get quite a few pointers on the customer experience journey and implementing it in your company the right way because he’s been there, has dealt with it and has understood the true meaning of customer centricity leading to ardent advocates.

We too, at Ephlux, cherish our clients and customers and even our employees – because that’s how we deliver the awesome customer experience with the wow factor! We stay true to our promises and truer to our customers! If you liked Mr. Adams, you’ll love meeting our CEO, M. Ali Nasim, who has come a long way in this Customer Experience journey – successfully paving hump-free paths and guided solutions for all verticals. Yes, Telco is one of them.