Mobile operators need to improve the in-store customer experience and better integrate their systems if their retail stores if they are to become the competitive advantage operators need them to be, says Rich Karpinski in a Telephony Online article today.
That was one of the takeaways from a JD Power and Amdocs survey of more than 4,000 consumers who recently visited a wireless retail store. It also found that of the 60 percent of customers who entered the retail store and planned to buy a new phone and plan, 25 percent left making no purchase at all, citing a poor customer experience at the retail location.
Ashvin Vellody, Yankee Group analyst and senior vice president, said,
The big [retail] challenges for operators, especially in this economy, are managing churn and providing the best customer experience. For years now, operators have lacked uniformity and synchronization among their customer interactions, online, at the call center and in their stores. The experiences are generally different because they are supported by different silos within the operators, with retail probably being the worst and most siloed of all.
