RESEARCH FOCUS  -  CUSTOMER CARE IN TELECOMS

Customer Care Systems

Today, the quality of customer service provided separates the winners from losers in virtually every competitive industry. This has started to happen within the telecom industry, since deregulation, and is likely to continue. Once customers can choose among different carriers, customer care will become the key to retaining market share. Providing good quality customer care will help with customer retention, as well as providing additional incentives to new customers.

There are now a number of challenges facing telecom services providers, as well as organisations that use these services extensively, these include:

	Obtaining new customers
	Providing metrics relating to calls
	Providing information on services
	Retaining existing customers

Over the years, telephone companies have utilised many different types of technologies throughout their businesses. Most of the technology has been used for improving their internal infrastructure. However, until recently, little of this technology has been directed at improving way telcos deal with  their customers. Customer service staff continue to answer questions and resolve problems in much the same way they have done for decades. 

Modern technology can now be adapted to provide improvements to customer care, which were previously not considered possible. Within the customer care environment, there are a number of areas which can provide significant improvements, these include:

	Billing systems
	Call Centres
	Call handling
	Client Relationship Management
	Customer analysis
	Customer Management Systems
	Customer service
	Customer retention
	Outsourcing

Additional information is also available on this Research Focus topic, these areas include:

Metrics      Billing     Call Centres   Outsourcing

Service      Loyalty   CRM  Call Handling

Return to the  Introduction  page of this Research Focus topic.