What are your customer retention strategies for 2023? Whether you’re a mobile network operator, aggregator or content service provider, reducing customer churn has to be a top priority. After all, it costs less to retain a customer than acquire a new one. 

But personalisation, rewards, loyalty programmes and other popular retention strategies to improve the customer experience are doomed to fail if you don’t get one thing right first. Customer care – the support you provide customers to help them with any questions or problems, and especially to deal with complaints.  

Why customer retention and customer care should be your top priority in 2023 

When a customer contacts your customer care team the clock starts ticking. The sooner they have their query or complaint dealt with appropriately, the higher the chance you will retain that customer.  

Typically the first contact will be with the customer’s mobile network operator, especially if they have a query about a charge on their bill. However, everyone in the mobile services ecosystem needs to prioritise customer care and ensure that the customer experience is optimised for a quick and extremely satisfactory resolution. 

In the mobile services and direct carrier billing industry, customer care is especially important because it helps to build trust and loyalty. By providing excellent customer care you can help ensure your customers are satisfied with the products or services they’ve purchased and reduce the number of customer complaints and issues that your team has to deal with.  

Additionally, you can help to improve your company’s reputation, which can lead to more sales and revenue. Good customer care builds strong relationships with customers and, most importantly, helps to ensure that customers want to continue to engage with their Mobile Network Operator and the Content Service Providers whose services they’ve purchased. 

5 benefits of excellent customer care for Mobile Network Operators and Content Service Providers 

1. Improved customer retention: By providing excellent customer care, MNOs and CSPs can help to reduce churn and improve customer retention. This is especially important in the carrier billing industry, where customers may have a number of different options for purchasing products or services online. 
2. Increased customer satisfaction: Excellent customer care can help to ensure that customers are happy with the products or services they have purchased, which can lead to increased customer satisfaction. This is especially important in our industry as questions or concerns about billing or service charges can be common due to legacy issues with bill descriptors. 
3. Enhanced reputation: Good customer care can also help to improve the reputation of an MNO or CSP, which can lead to more sales and revenue. MNOs with good reputations see lower customer churn, even when competitors offer better deals. Reputable CSPs build trust with customers, which keeps them engaged with their services and helps to upsell more services. 
4. Reduced customer complaints: Excellent customer care reduces complaints and improves the overall customer experience. This saves time and resources, freeing up your customer care team to focus on adding more value. 
5. Increased sales and revenue: As mentioned above, by providing good customer care MNOs and CSPs can help to build trust and loyalty among their customers leading to increased sales and revenue. In the carrier billing industry this is especially important as customers may be hesitant to make purchases online or use phone-paid services, and can have concerns about the billing process. 

Industry bodies like aimm and MEF have created best practice guides to help MNOs and CSPs improve customer care and reduce escalations. MCP Insight was delighted to advise on these, drawing on our experience working with operators and content providers to improve customer satisfaction and reduce complaints.  

We map the customer experience from pre-sales to customer care, deploying solutions throughout the journey designed to ensure the customer understands what they are purchasing and has given clear consent to be charged for the service. With our support customers have seen an 80% reduction in complaints and when customers do query a charge, our clients’ customer care teams are equipped to handle them quickly with a focus on customer retention. 

If you would like to discuss your customer retention strategies or how to improve the customer experience in the mobile services industry, we would be happy to have a chat and share our knowledge and experience. Contact the MCP team here to arrange a meeting.