I ran a training course recently on the importance of the “Customer Experience” with my team. Naturally, I wanted to be prepared with knowledge and information to support my presentation. The key thing for me is that working in telecoms, we are not offering a physical product, but a service to our clients, so the experience they receive has to be second to none (We have an amazing retention rate to back this up!).
My preparation revealed some pretty shocking facts, the main being that out of all UK sectors, telecoms is considered to offer the worst service levels, according to a CSI survey in 2015. In the same year, Ofcom revealed their summary of complaints by type over the months of April 2014-15. Interestingly, complaints about being mis-sold fixedline or mobile packages or being charged high termination fees, averaged between 80 and 200 per month. Whereas, complaints about service received, averaged a staggering 1000 per month.
All you have to do is Google “Telecommunications Customer Service” to find that this is not a new complaint, it has been around for many years. There are a lot of articles being written about how companies should change their ways or face a loss of market share. There are hundreds upon hundreds of articles about how customer service should be perceived and how to change moving forward. Would it be that straight forward or timely for a company to completely change the way they work?
You could conclude that the easiest option would be to form a new company that is focussed solely around the experience for their clients and partners. Well, that is exactly how 2 Circles was started 17 years ago.
Our Directors started off telecoms life as a resellers and were equally as frustrated with the service they received. They were bound by the response times and delays, to the degree that they could not offer a great experience to their clients. Something had to change, so they took the brave step of starting their own telecoms company with the sole view of providing the best service to clients and partners in the UK.
17 years on and we have maintained a consistent year on year growth, adding a wide spectrum of products to our portfolio, all the while maintaining an industry leading Client Retention Rate. How have we done this? We provide a great customer experience to all clients.
Consumers are beginning to expect a higher quality of customer service from their broadband providers. More than one in five people are willing to complain about the quality of telecoms customer service. It is no surprise, then, that the industry ranked tenth out of 13 sectors for customer service.
