For those of us that consumes services, any kind of services we all do not want interruptions to those services. Just imagine you are in an airport and suddenly the entire flight control system goes down without notice, this will create chaos and delays and for customers frustrations, stress and unhappiness. Just imagine you are one of those passengers stuck in the airport and have an emergency to attend to, how would you feel? Same is true for basic services like electricity and water, now adays we are so used to seamless services that interruptions becomes a very big deal and a sources of frustrations. Having said that there are still countries where service interruptions are normal and for them they have adapted to that way of life, became part of the culture so service interruptions are just an annoyance. For those of us who are used to good and seamless services will we accept such mentality to be imposed on us in terms of service interruptions? Will you hire a service provider with this kind of mentality or culture?
In today’s highly mobile and digital world, mobile data has become a basic service. It is embedded in our daily lives that we can no longer live without it. How do we feel if suddenly there is no communications service, we can’t browse the internet, we can’t watch streaming videos, we can’t communicate instantly? It will feel like we are back to the stone age, it will create chaos and a lot of frustration to many and in some cases affected customers will churn and switch a different service provider.
Now service interruptions are unavoidable since as a service provider there is a need to schedule maintenance, to improve services to ensure continuity of services. Would it reduce stress and frustration if customers are notified correctly of such interruptions? Consider Telenor in Sweden, they notify customers by SMS for scheduled interruptions, surely this is a good thing since as a customer you know when you will not have any services available. However as customers we also do not want to receive service notifications that do not affect us since it becomes an annoyance. Just imagine you are in the Maldives enjoying your vacation, then suddenly you receive service notifications every hour, won’t you be annoyed?
There is of course an ideal way of notifying customers for service interruptions, that is only notify customers who are directly affected by such interruption at a specific time. This can be done by Geo-fencing, the challenge of course is how to effective implement Geo-fencing without sounding like big brother watching every customer.
In today’s highly mobile and digital world, mobile data has become a basic service. It is embedded in our daily lives that we can no longer live without it. How do we feel if suddenly there is no communications service, we can’t browse the internet, we can’t watch streaming videos, we can’t communicate instantly? It will feel like we are back to the stone age, it will create chaos and a lot of frustration to many and in some cases affected customers will churn and switch a different service provider.
Now service interruptions are unavoidable since as a service provider there is a need to schedule maintenance, to improve services to ensure continuity of services. Would it reduce stress and frustration if customers are notified correctly of such interruptions? Consider Telenor in Sweden, they notify customers by SMS for scheduled interruptions, surely this is a good thing since as a customer you know when you will not have any services available. However as customers we also do not want to receive service notifications that do not affect us since it becomes an annoyance. Just imagine you are in the Maldives enjoying your vacation, then suddenly you receive service notifications every hour, won’t you be annoyed?
There is of course an ideal way of notifying customers for service interruptions, that is only notify customers who are directly affected by such interruption at a specific time. This can be done by Geo-fencing, the challenge of course is how to effective implement Geo-fencing without sounding like big brother watching every customer.
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