Store? App? Diverging Channel Strategies for Different Providers But Complementary for Others

What Retail Can and Does Do

More than 70 percent of telecom customers still want retail involved at some point in their service process or journey. Despite a rising Gen Z population that has a lesser appetite for retail visits, it will not entirely disappear. The retail visit still remains the brand’s last line of defense to solve customer issues, up/cross-sell and maintain positive customer experience.  Retail's value is trust at moments that carry weight, and that only holds when the rep is informed.
There are three areas retail 

• In-store self-troubleshooting: A stand that allows customers to handle basic self-troubleshooting service steps with connectivity or device so simple support tasks don't require a rep’s valuable time that should be spent upselling.

• Informed assistance: The rep is provided a breakdown of the customer’s disposition and is advised with suggestions on how to help the customers and what offers to make based on the conversation.

• BOPIS expediency: When the customer has already purchased or started the process online, the store's job is a fast, clean pickup, not a re-sell.

Most providers are experimenting or already underway with many of these features. ‘

What Digital (App or Web) Can and Should Do

Mobile is already the leading platform for customer engagement, with 60 percent of telecom customers wanting digital channels to initiate or execute support. But for most communication service providers (CSPs), the app functions like a passive channel of interaction, a bastion for basic self-service and nothing more. Seventy percent of consumers prefer brands that are proactive and telecom customers specifically indicated to Accenture that they’d be frustrated by the absence of personalization. This calls for the app to transform in three ways:

• Proactive engagement: Reaching out to the customer about their experience at an appropriate frequency and before they may encounter a problem, rather than relying largely on NPS surveys or a retail visit to ask. This can increase app engagement by up to 4x.

• Effective self-service: not a menu of help articles, but actual diagnosis of issues and a deliverable resolution, with a clean handoff to a human when the app reaches its limit of its capabilities. When this capability is executed well, it can boost NPS by 10 points.

• Hyper-segmented up- and cross-sell: offers built on what this customer's profile and holistic data indicate, not broadly segmented ones served to a large demographic. When initiated by a proactive, value-driven engagement, it can increase promo invoke rate by 3x.

• Communication: billing, plan changes, usage, notifications rather than using an SMS, which is less likely to be opened due to phishing concerns.

Most provider apps do this generally well and the first three hardly at all. What remains is to  connect the experiences between these channels.

The Handoff Between the Two is a Gap

Most consumers are likely to visit both a store and use the app, especially in a single journey, whether for billing inquiries or issue troubleshooting. Where the journey tends to break down is the disconnect between the channels. Most providers don’t carry over the entire context of an interaction in one channel to another. This causes repetition and frustration. Most customers reported experiencing this kind of repetition, which led to a 9-point NPS drop on average.

When context does travel, each channel improves the other: the app generates qualified store traffic instead of cannibalizing it, and the rep continues a conversation rather than restarting it. This matters in the AI era.

The AI and Data Factor

In the AI era, where it is becoming the norm in customer service, being able to execute on what these channels should do and connecting them is a must. Otherwise, adding AI on top merely acts as an optics play and can even exacerbate the siloing problem. A customer who is engaged by an AI agent in the app and with positive response and then visits a retail store where only some of the context is carried over risks nullifying the initial gains of the AI-driven app experience.

That makes every capability above a data problem in customer-experience clothing. Four sources matter, three of which are already in use: CRM for identity and history, billing for what the customer pays for and disputes, network for coverage and performance and the device for the most immediate, real-time, objective disposition.

The device is the one closest data asset to the customer – where the experience actually happens. It also explains a large share of contact drivers that CRM and billing cannot see and serves as the only one of the four that travels with the customer through every channel, which makes it the practical spine for continuity between them, and where AI fits most naturally.

Whether your audience is primarily starting through the device or seeking human touch first, MCE Systems is your partner to ensure the context serves as a means to a customer experience end. With 20 years in the business, backed by ample customer experience data and AI expertise, we can help your channel operations and digital teams connect and amplify experiences to meet business PNL goals.