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Johannesburg - Almost 50% of customers surveyed in South Africa, Germany, Morocco, Nigeria, Poland and Spain are unhappy with their mobile networks’ service levels.
In January, UK-based MobileSquared on behalf of network and subscriber intelligence business Astellia surveyed 2 000 mobile network customers across the six countries. The survey’s recipients consisted of customers who have contacted their mobile provider with a network-related problem over the last 24 months.
In addition, 40 mobile networks also took part in a survey between December 2014 and March 2015.
Results of the customer survey indicate that 48.5% of participants said they have had a less-than satisfactory engagement with their mobile operator.
Other results suggest that 66% of subscribers expect a network-related problem to be resolved within one hour and that only 28% of consumers were prepared to wait up to 24 hours.
“This contrasts starkly with the findings from the MNOs (mobile network operators) themselves, the majority of whom believe their customers will wait up to one day for network problems to be resolved, and a further 26% expecting their customers will wait up to three days,” reads a statement from Astellia and MobileSquared regarding the report.
“This is despite the fact that the MNOs themselves also admit that more than 50% of network-related calls are not resolved on the first attempt and require an additional call-back,” say the researchers.
Other results of the survey indicate that more than one-third of mobile customers said that their providers did not have access to relevant information - such as customer usage and location details - when dealing with network-related complaints.
The research further says that half of MNOs said their contact centres do not have the prerequisite tools to deal with customer problems.
In addition, only 27% of mobile users would be classified as a ‘promoter’ of their MNO according to Net Promoter Scores (NPS). These scores also reveal that 30% would be ‘passive’, and 43% would be described as ‘detractors’ regarding their MNO.
“Amazingly, not one MNO respondent believed their customers would rate their satisfaction as a promoter,” reads the research.
Meanwhile, 36% of mobile networks said they plan to try increase the percentage of their ‘promoters’ and migrating their ‘detractors’ into ‘passives’ with a long term aim of becoming 'promoters'.
The researchers note that customer experience can be improved if mobile networks migrate their network-centric organisation towards a customer-centric model.
“The same research found that MNOs that have moved to a customer-centric model are already reporting a 17% increase in customer satisfaction and a 21% decrease in the number of complaints over a 12-month period,” say the researchers.
Do you think SA mobile networks are doing enough when it comes to customer service levels? Tell us?
