Self-care Portals: There's an App for that

Operators have long understood the value of giving customers more insight and control over their service plans. Customer “self-care” not only reduces call center and maintenance costs, but gives Communication Service Providers (CSPs) the ability to enhance the overall customer experience ultimately creating more loyal and profitable interactions. For many years, building robust web self-care portals was the method of choice, but in today’s media-rich, on-demand world, customers and CSPs are moving away from portals and looking at how they can best engage with customers on mobile devices.

In the past portals were often a “walled garden” approach and operators spent millions on developing them with little commercial success. One European operator found that out first hand when the company embarked on a plan to build a central portal that would serve as a one stop shop for all customer services and mobile content. However, the initiative proved too much to handle due to the myriad of customer software updates, options and technology requirements.  After less than two years, countless resource investments and thousands of angry customers, the carrier had to put the initiative on hold and look for a better way to address customer self service needs.

Self-care apps provide all the same intended benefits of customer portals, but map to evolving customer preferences and behavior while giving operators the flexibility to combine pre-billed and pre-bundled apps with policy rules. For CSPs apps are a bit like portals 2.0. The goal is still customer engagement, but it’s designed to fit into the palm of hand – via your device of choice – and deliver on the promise of customized customer interactions.

Interestingly it is that element of choice that is becoming the biggest challenge for many operators. The ability to support multiple platforms “on device” is no easy task. iOS, Android (News - Alert), Blackberry and Windows Mobile for example are completely different operating systems and require an app specific to their individual platform. Customers however need to access the same functionality and have it display correctly on each device. Otherwise users become frustrated with the app due to its limited functionality and unreliability. This in turn creates a negative impact on customer service – the very thing operators are trying to improve in the first place!

Apps present a major opportunity, but the complexities and costs due to supporting multiple OS platforms and device capabilities may simply out weight the benefit. Instead, CSPs need to evaluate independent mobile self care platforms that can deliver and display the same functionality and screens to end users correctly irrespective of what device they are using. This ensures the operator doesn’t need to worry about developing and supporting apps for multiple operating systems and devices. Such an approach will enable CSPs need to focus on keeping up to date with the latest and greatest in devices while meeting customers’ expectations for service – on any device at any time. 

Apps may be the trend of the moment, but device independent mobile self care platforms will prove to be the long-term path to successful customer interactions.  CSPs have a unique opportunity to benefit from the ability to interact with customers more frequently and in a more personalized fashion. Customer portals may be a thing of the past, but one thing that hasn’t changed is the importance of customer service. As consumers have more and more choices for carries and providers, CSPs can stand out from the competition by giving customers more of what they want and ensuring their technology mechanism can deliver.

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