Do We Want to Know When Service is Not Going to be Available?

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.

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?

Swedish Customer Service, Does it exist?

This past month my observation of customer service in Sweden was both reinforced and rebuffed. After observing how customer service is delivered in Sweden I came to the conclusion that customer service in Sweden is very bad. Take for example when I went to an electronic store and wanting to buy a TV on the spot, so I asked a sales rep standing by the TV displays about a 55-inch 3D TV… I got the answer that its not his department so I should look for someone else to help me, well after minutes of searching found one sales rep and told him that I am ready to buy out of the store, including a Bose surround system… After showing me several models and when I mentioned which one I will get, the sales rep went away since he saw a familiar face (a friend maybe) and started helping that person…. After 30 minutes of waiting I just god fed up and left… away with me is a business to them worth 7000€… its a small potential purchase but then again this illustrates how bad customer service is in Sweden.

I was very surprised though that Orensundskraft proved me wrong. They did have a very good customer service. Which started with a phone call since I wanted to have electricity on a flat I just signed up to. After 1 minute of finding where it is, the sales rep on the phone agreed to send a technician to turn on the electricity on the building at my preferred time…. No hassles. Just to see if the good customer service is consistent, I emailed support and asked to change the date and time. I got a prompt response from customer support rep Charlotte that its OK to move to another on time of my choosing.. I chose a time, communicated it and looked forward to the technician showing in front of the door. On the specified time, on the dot the technician showed up, took him 2 minutes to sort everything out… What I got was a consistently good customer service. Congratulations Oresundskraft, you demonstrated that Sweden is not hopeless after all when it comes to good customer service….. Keep up the good work!

Creating a Captivating, Exciting, Powerful and Provocative Presentation

AmanziTel was selected to Oresund Top 10, making AmanziTel one of the 10 most promising companies in Denmark and Sweden. How did we get here? Innovative thinking and the desire to change our market landscape forever with the view of expanding to vertical markets in the future. The selection was made by CONNECT Denmark and CONNECT Skåne, where they evaluate companies both young and mature for inclusion to Oresund Top 10. The selected 10 companies will make a presentation in front an audience of venture capital firms and other investors with the aim of securing grants.

I am preparing my presentation and so far it took me 2 days to get a first draft. I wanted to make the presentation very different from all other presentations that investors have seen in the past. It's a tall order since in an ordinary day a VC reviews about 10 different presentations that makes it around 250 presentations a year so how do you make a presentation that is different from all others. If its not possible how do you create a presentation that won't bore an audience such as a group of VCs who probably heard almost every type of business cases.

I wanted the presentation to be exciting, powerful, provocative and captivating with the aim to convince VCs to part with their millions and give it to my cause. I have enlisted the help of the world's most renown presenters, experts in public speaking, checked with industry colleagues, friends and acquaintances. I got some similar advice, some contrasting tips and pointers. Tomorrow I got to do the presentation to the first set of local VCs and gather their feedback.

I have spoken in front of a huge audience before (tens of thousands), I have met with VCs before, I have presented in front of business leaders, politicians, famous people, industry peers and most of all customers. Does that qualify me in creating a good presentation for Oresund Top 10? The answer is NO, not until I know who the audience are, their current emotional state at that particular moment. This I will only know once I am standing in front of them.

Can't I not research before hand? Yes, I can. On the contrary a person's emotional state at a particular moment affects and guides his or her decision making at that moment. So to be achieve my goals for this presentation I should seduce them :-) and NO that does not include me or an accomplice doing a strip tease... It has to be something better. Got any ideas? Please feel free to let me know.