Service Stands Tall

New applications such as SMS and wireless-Internet service may be cool, but most customers still want a strong customer-service base.

New services and applications such as instant messaging, SMS and the wireless Internet are like juicy new fruits you can't wait for consumers to pick. But they aren't quite ripe, and consumers aren't sure they want them.

So don't lose sight of customer service, which should be the base of your operations and one of the most important, if not the most important, reasons consumers choose you and stay loyal.

A recent Telephia survey of more than 43,000 wireless customers revealed that the strongest predictor of overall customer satisfaction is customer service and, along with network performance, it is the strongest driver of overall satisfaction.

"If consumers have a change in their experience with customer service, it impacts their overall satisfaction with the service provider," said Alan Brune, Telephia vice president of marketing.

According to a Merrill Lynch study, 18% of cellular users cite quality of service as a reason for churning. As providers' subscriber growth stretches customer service over the next few years, so too will having to explain the multitude of new data services at the same time.

But customer service remains the primary way for you to attract and keep customers, as well as to differentiate yourself in an increasingly crowded wireless marketplace.

"Customer service will always be the difference no matter what's out there, unless it's foolproof," said Brenda McElveen, vice president of administration for US Unwired, a Lake Charles, LA-based Sprint PCS affiliate provider that also offers paging, cellular and data services. "Customers want to talk to live people. There has to be a person available to help them with their problems, and I think that will always be necessary."

Service Roots Run Deep David Friedman, U.S. Cellular vice president of marketing, said consumers favor a provider with good customer service over one that offers all the latest and greatest applications.

"I would love to hear the customer say, `Yeah I want the coolest products and services,' but in reality they don't," he said. "Based on our research, customers favor a company that has a high quality of service. Quality of service and customer service, lack of dropped calls, reliability of connections and clarity of signal are all critical, more so than the novelty of a new service."

Linda Baker, U.S. Cellular vice president of customer service, said that service is even more critical today than ever before.

"The back-end service after the point of sale is just as important as the service you receive at the point of sale, especially in today's environment with all the advancements and new technology," she said.

"The cellular industry is getting so technologically advanced that it's no different than when you bought a Gateway computer, came home, and once you started working with it, you really rely on that 1-800 number to give you the feature information and all the information that you may not have consumed at the point of sale."

Treatment Matters Customers don't care whether you were the first to offer SMS messaging, but they do care about how they were treated in your retail store and beyond.

"The business that we're in is service because it's a very ethereal-type of product," Friedman explained. "It's air; you're getting a connection via the airwaves. We want to make sure that the consumer knows we are with them, and there's a face behind the cellular service, the ethereal service. The tangible part of it is our brick-and-mortar stores, our sales reps, our customer service."

Customer service directly affects your brand, whereas new applications may only affect early adopters.

"Customer service goes beyond just a customer-support rep on the frontline, and that's the part that people don't get," Friedman said. "Customer service is the way the company comes across; customer service becomes part of the brand essence."

According to McElveen, even the consumers who want all the new technology will always come to customer service when they have a question or problem.

"Service is what keeps you ahead of the game," she said. "Customers like the cool new services, but if that new service should break, then they need someone they can call to help them fix it. When they leave the store after the point of sale, their next contact with our company will be with customer service."

Growing Relationships It's no revelation that consumers have a lot of wireless choices today. That's why it's important to make customer service your No. 1 priority over any one service or application.

"Once the customer buys service, every time they dial a number or call up a database, there is a moment of truth between a customer and a company," Friedman said.

"(Service) provides a level of trust with our customers that we are trying to achieve, knowing that we are going beyond just their basic service needs, that we're individualizing the experience and we're going to be there for them 24 hours a day," Baker said. "When we sell a phone, we don't just sell the phone. We develop a long-term relationship, and in order to have that relationship, service has to be your No. 1 priority."

But the widespread availability and use of wireless-data applications will affect providers' customer service. Baker said U.S. Cellular's level of customer service will remain the same no matter what applications the customer may choose, although its training methods will change.

"It influences the entire dynamics of your company," she said. "We would need to staff per hit rather than per call. There are things you have to re-train on, such as `Netiquette.' There's definitely a different forum for training and how you communicate with someone on the Internet, face-to-face or over the phone."

According to Friedman, customer service is clearly a bigger selling point today because the wireless Internet leaves a lot to be desired, despite all the hype in the industry. Consumers with WAP-enabled handsets may check their stocks or the weather every now and then, but they really don't use the wireless Internet for much yet.

"The data services are just not at the level where the mass market is going to accept them," he said. "It will change, but it's going to take time until the equipment gets up to speed, the monochromatic displays change into something with better graphics, entertainment and information services come up that suit the customers' fancy, or until e-mail can be read on more than a screen that's one inch by two inches."

Technology Aids Customers US Unwired is taking advantage of new technology to enhance its customer service. For example, the provider alerts its prepaid customers via SMS messages when their minutes are getting low, McElveen said.

But are providers getting so swept up in offering the newest services that they're forgetting about the most important one of all - customer service?

Friedman said providers must focus on both.

"We have to be able to explain the applications for people who want that," he said. "We also have to be able to in our retail stores get the message across that we are a customer-service-oriented company."

McElveen said new technology requires better customer service and training.

"It's very tough for a customer-service rep today to keep up with everything that's going on, but that's where your training programs come in," she said. "It's important to stay ahead of the game as much as possible with training, and also you have to have continuous training from day to day and week to week, computer-based or classroom."

"These are exciting times, and I'd love to be able to say it's exciting because customers are demanding these new services," Friedman said. "When you really get down to it, the thing that makes us different, guarantees our success and makes sure that customers believe in us is our ability to pay attention to customers' needs, and that goes into the greater scheme of things called customer service."