Customer Experience in Telecoms

Being in China last week give me glimpse how fast Customer Experience programs are being rolled-out in the country. This I can lay claim to while observing one of our customer deployments  (server failed, alarms everywhere, engineers panicked, solved with only 3 minutes downtime) where a single Customer IQ server receives more than 800,000 files per day and growing, this means that the update can be as much as 800,000 devices in that day or it can also be 800,000 customer complains to the operator in a single day… Hopefully for that customer, the largest operator in the world, its the former and not the later… On my way back to Nordics I can't help but think about what we in the western world term as big data, how much we stress about meeting big data requirements…. Comparing to China perhaps experiences from 800,000 mobile devices in a day is not yet considered as big data when they have 800,000,000 subscribers…. Seems like our deployment has room to grow still before we can join the Billion subscriber club….

I have been asked a few times to speak on a conference or to blog about an event and while searching for meaningful conference to attend to I stumbled upon CEM in Telecoms Middle East Summit. And after discussions with IQPC's Radhika Sasidharan I agreed to be part of the event. One things that entice me to be part of it are the line up of speakers and the topics being discussed. I attended the event as speaker last year and at the same time as one of the sponsors.. Back then Telecom operators were trying to learn from other verticals such as airports, banks and hotels… A Year later its now very focused in to the Telecoms market. So the trend in the Middle East is similar to Asia where the  subscribers base of our  customers using the Customer IQ solution have exceeded more than a Billion considering the size of the operators we work with.

The CEM in Telecoms MEA will be in Dubai, the melting pot of culture and businesses at the end of March. I am very much looking forward to be there to see the progress that du have achieved with Osman Sultan (CEO, du) talking about how customer centricity starts at the top. Graham Webster of Telefonica will also be sharing how Telfonica O2 managed to engage their subscribers emotionally while Gurul Kurt will be presenting a case study in TeliaSonera about delivering on customer promises. Its going to be an exciting spring in Dubai…. And like last year perhaps I can catch some snow and skiing on the way back to the Nordics after the warm spring in Dubai….

Speaking of the Nordics, I won't make my flight to Norway today so enjoy the snow in Sweden and   contemplate on how customer experiences can be improved in one Nordic operator. Let's see.. how should I do that?

Why SAS is losing customers and bleeding money?

Flying with SAS to Washington is such a bad experience. Considering that the airline is in a brink of collapse it seems that they have not found that golden chalice that can save it. For a company like SAS to survive it should not try to compete with the budget carriers, however it should provide a good experience instead.

Flying with SAS on domestic and short European flights is OK. However flying with them for any flight more than 4 hours, its a regrettable experience. First is the price. SAS is never cheap compared to the budget carriers. Second is inflight the service. I don't know where they train their staff, but they can surely learn from Asian and Middle Easter carriers. The inflight service is so bad that on an 8 hour flight on economy you are forced to pay for inflight meals that taste like it came straight from the freezer after being stored for years. I mean how had can it be to integrate a 5$ deal on the ticket sales instead of trying to profit from it by charging double and selling in while on the air? 5$ is nothing when combined with a ticket costing 2000$ or more. Other than the looking down at the melting glaciers, ice and snow over Greenland there is really nothing good about in flight services with SAS. Thirdly is the plane. They fly really old planes with seats are are falling apart and very uncomfortable that my back, and shoulders were hurting badly during and after the flight. Lastly is the entertainment system. Even in Asian regional carriers you get a personalized screen in economy, on SAS you only get the tiny over head display with very bad resolution that you can not actually see the picture unless you are Superman with laser vision.

Its a pity because the ground experience at Scandinavian airports are so good with their efficient self-service kiosk (eliminating waiting time). The inflight experience is a such a let down that I told my self given the choice I will never fly with SAS long haul again unless they fix the bad experience they serve to their customers. If I look at a Thai flight I took from Bangkok to Copenhagen, there's a lot of things SAS can learn, even considering that that flight is very full (all seats taken) , you still come out with a very good experience that you would want to keep flying with the airline. Which brings me to the point that on the same day I flew from Bangkok to Copenhagen I was given the option to fly with Thai or SAS and was told that Thai was overbooked while SAS is almost empty, at that time me and a hundred other passengers made the right choice. So why does SAS keep losing customers and bleeding money? Well their executives should take this long haul flights in economy and compare how they do against airlines such as Singapore Air or Emirates or Virgin…. Experience is everything, even on airlines.

Problem is of course airline executives never fly in their own economy cabins….