Neglecting Web-based customer care hazardous

Companies also scored higher if they offer “ease of escalation,” Subramaniam said, allowing consumers who get stuck on the Web site to seamlessly upgrade to a live agent.

Where North American service providers particularly stumble, however, is in providing consistency of customer care.

“Multi-agent and multi-channel consistency was one of the worst performing areas,” Subramaniam said. “There are still channel silos out there that build up over years – one for self-service, one for email, one for phone calls – and they are not really unified. Even among phone agents, they are often not using a common knowledge base, so agents are not giving the same answers. As a result, these companies have the dialing for dollars syndrome – some savvy consumers call repeatedly or use different channels to get the best deal.”

More importantly, he added, some consumers will get frustrated by wrong answers and move to a competitor. As telecom service providers try to improve retention, multi-channel customer support consistency becomes more important, Subramaniam said.