The impact of negative customer reviews on telcos – and three ways to deal with them

No matter what industry you are in, negative reviews can have a major impact on growth, customer retention, and new customer acquisition. According to one survey, seeing a negative review convinced 94% of consumers to avoid engaging with a particular business.

While anyone can fall foul of bad customer reviews, telecoms companies seem to find themselves on the receiving end of more than most. In 2021, the average Net Promoter Score for telecoms companies was just 31 – falling far below most other industries that are famed for causing customer frustration.

But what is driving so many telco customers to review their providers negatively? And how can modern telco providers deliver services that avoid the ire of their customers?

Why are telcos poorly reviewed?

Consumers today expect high-speed and faster communication as a basic requirement and telco providers are certainly trying to keep pace with modern day disruption. Here are some of the root challenges where telecoms a.re facing difficulty in driving a seamless customer experience.  

Lack of personalized customer service is a major red flag

Telecoms and connectivity services have become tightly woven into the day-to-day lives of the average consumer. Customers rely on telco services around the clock for everything from essential communication to entertainment, and when there’s a problem with those services, it immediately causes intense frustration and dissatisfaction. When a customer service interaction begins with that level of frustration, it takes a deep and empathetic understanding of the consumer to drive a positive outcome.

In 2021 the average Net Promoter Score for telecoms companies was 31, falling far below most other industries.

Operating a telco has become incredibly complex

With millions of customers and an expansive variety of products and customized solutions on offer, telcos’ operational tasks have become highly complex. Those huge service portfolios make simple tasks such as service configuration, invoicing, order fulfilment, and payments challenging to manage.

It’s a lot for service agents to handle and navigate, which quickly translates into poor customer experiences, and customers potentially feeling like their problem was not addressed immediately.  

Telcos are yet to fully leverage the customer data available to them

Today’s customers expect timely, personalized service experiences, delivered through their channels of choice. But despite having access to an incredible amount of consumer data, many telcos still aren’t using it to learn who their customers are, what they need, and how best to serve them.

Personalized engagement is quickly becoming the standard across virtually every industry. Customers now expect it in return for the data they provide a business with.

There is a common thread running through those drivers. At the core of it, telcos are yet to fully meet expectations of their modern-day customers. So, if telcos want to fight back against negative reviews, they need to begin by finding new ways to close that gap and rise to new customer experience expectations.

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Three ways telcos can reduce negative reviews

The best way to improve customer service and provide experiences worth celebrating will vary from company to company depending on what their customer engagement landscape looks like today. But here are three proven strategies that can help any team tackle the root causes of negative reviews:

1. Meet more customers where they are

One of the most straightforward ways of improving customer experiences and reducing the chance of negative interactions is expanding the range of channels where you engage with customers. Modern business messaging channels are quickly becoming the new standard for business-to-consumer interaction.

2. Give your customers the chance to feed back to you directly

Telcos need a platform for their customers to directly provide their feedback easily. By building feedback surveys and reviewing mechanisms into your digital customer journeys, you can listen to your customers directly, capture those positive reviews, and capture the kind of insights you need to improve experiences.

When customers know they have a way to immediately tell you how they feel, it can go a long way towards defusing negative experiences and preventing public shows of dissatisfaction. But it’s crucial that telcos follow up on any negative feedback and take meaningful steps to action it, or they risk causing even greater customer dissatisfaction.

3. Seize the CPaaS opportunity

To deliver satisfying customer experiences, telcos must do two things; understand what their customers want and deliver that through intuitive and engaging journeys. Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS) offerings can help them do both at the same time.

An Enterprise-grade CPaaS platform like Webex Connect can help telcos centrally manage and connect their customer interactions and engagement channels. By bringing everything together in one place, they help organizations learn about their customers, discover their engagement and communication preferences, then build connected and even automated service journeys around them.

By integrating modern communication channels with low-code development tools, CPaaS solutions provide everything telco teams need to rapidly change customer perceptions, tackle the root causes of negative reviews, capture positive reviews and deliver the satisfying, empathetic service experiences customers really want.

Powering interactions with Webex Connect

The Webex Connect platform currently powers several customer use cases for capturing feedback efficiently. SMARTY, a rapidly growing UK SIM only network operated by Three, were looking to improve the way they interact with their customer base.

We helped them with direct integration to Trustpilot which enabled customers to leave reviews quickly and easily. Today, 70% of SMARTY’s Trustpilot reviews now have a 5-star rating. They have significantly improved their NPS too. We also helped Vodafone send NPS requests to their client base leveraging RCS business messaging, making it convenient for customers to leave a response.

Smarty customer story

Vodafone customer story