Online customer care is prefered

[Fire14]

I wonder if they did this here in the US, if the results would have been higher, I know I prefer online when possible.

Cellphone customers prefer online customer care - report
It seems people have lost patience with call-centres. According to a poll commissioned by Netonomy, a clear majority (59%) of mobile users would now prefer to manage their accounts themselves online or through their handset, with a further 7% voting for automated service through IVR. Only 12% favour phoning a customer service call-centre or visiting a high-street store (9%).

The poll, which was conducted by YouGov across over 2,000 UK consumers, reflects the emergence of a self-service society. While only a few years ago customers preferred to speak to a company representative directly when they bought a product or make a change to their accounts, they now expect to be able to find out the information they need and make the account changes or purchase the goods they want immediately online. Over two thirds (67%) of 18 to 29 year olds would now prefer to manage their mobile account online.

"It seems we've reached the crucial tipping point in consumer attitudes and self-service will now become the primary channel for customer sales and service," comments John Hughes, cofounder and executive vice president of Netonomy. "This is great news for mobile operators. In an industry where customer service is the key long-term differentiator, mobile operators have invested heavily in call-centres in order to meet expectations and maintain customer loyalty. However, this survey suggests that mobile operators could - and should - move a sizeable chunk of call-centre traffic online. By giving their customers simple yet effective self-service facilities, operators can improve customer service and reduce churn while at the same time significantly reducing costs - it's a WIN-WIN situation"

The results show demand for self-service across all ages and across a range of different activities:

55% (rising to 76% of 18 to 29 year olds) want to view or analyse their bill online

45% (68% for 18 to 29 year olds) want to check their talk plan or change their tariff online
44% (53%) want to top up mobile phone credit online
35% (56%) want to change contact details or billing address online
33% (49%) want to check mobile phone usage online
For operators that are keen to generate revenue from new value-added services the survey provides even more reasons to provide and market self-service facilities - 44% of mobile customers would use self-service at least once each month, while 18% would use it every week, providing additional opportunities to sell related products and services such as photo messaging bundles or music downloads.

Interestingly only 34% of people who do not have (or aren't aware that they have) access to self-service were interested in using it. This contrasts strongly with results for people that have used self-service - 94% of those that had used online self-service found it useful and nearly half (45%) found it very useful. This suggests that customers may at first be hesitant, but become keen self-servers once they've tried it for the first time.

Other interesting statistics:

According to Gartner, self-service can reduce the costs of handling common sales and service transactions by up to 90%.

Datamonitor estimates that the cost of handling a customer in a call-centre to be between $4.01 and $15.00 as opposed to between $0.18 and $1.17 for a web-based self-service customer enquiry.

[Sprint PCS 411]

I like using the online Customer Service Online better than over the phone. The online CSRs seem to know more and be much more helpful and curtious. You can have Live Data Chats, post on a members forums for other Cingular/ATT Users to help you out with the problems (and usually a CSR will answer the post too) and then you can email the CSR for more help w/ the problem.

I am in the process of figuring out my phone problems via E-Mail with an online Cingular CSR.

[Gideon H]

I also prefer online service whenever possible... or even an online chat with a representative rather than calling them. This way we both know what we are saying because there aren't any accents I have to strain to understand or annoying people who don't get what I am trying to say. But if I want an instant answer to a problem, I will call them rather than wait for an email or wait for a chat to load or something.

[Matt]

online billing and plan and feature changes are nice. If I have a problem, though, I just call customer care.