LIVE FROM CEM IN TELECOMS GLOBAL SUMMIT, LONDON: Global operators insisted consistency plays a very important role in customer service experience, and highlighted seamless interactions across all channels as a key challenge in the field.

Katy Pearce, head of customer experience at Vodafone Business (pictured, third from right), explained consistency is “quite a challenge” because sometimes it “can fly in the face of personalisation, and we talk a lot about personalisation when it comes to customer experience”.

She added Vodafone has to balance consistency across channels in order to deliver at scale globally.

“Omnichannel is so critical and it’s not about pushing customers down the digital channel, but is about giving them that choice. Ideally, we want to get to the stage where they are self-serving, they are using digital but we cannot forget about the other channels. We have to make sure whichever channel the customer chooses to enter, they can get to the other channels and they get the same information, they get the consistency of experience”, Pearce stated.

Telefonica’s director of operations and customer experience Juan Manuel Caro Bernat (pictured, second from right) highlighted the operator’s efforts to be consistent and to give customers a dependable experience across the channels, and elaborated on the key elements to achieve this.

“You have to do the same look and feel, the same kind of language, something that is recognisable, but not exactly the same steps in every channel. Consistency is very important, but it’s not to replicate the exact same thing in every channel”.

Customer focus
Suman Kargupta, SVP and head of customer experience at Reliance Jio (pictured, far left), pointed to continuity as the most important element in providing customer care. He said service providers need to understand the context of their users and try to predict why they are reaching the company.

For Ukranian operator Volia, ensuring the customer service is delivered in a more human way is a key focus, CEO Michael Dmitrichenko (pictured, second from left) explained.

He highlighted discovering ways to connect with customers as an essential element in this, noting subscribers need to know “how to use digital tools but still have opportunity to talk to people”.