TalkTalk focuses on improving chat-based customer service
It’s rarely a pleasure calling customer services for any company – long delays, a poor quality connection, and inevitably not achieving what you were trying to do in the first place.
British MVNO operator TalkTalk seems to have recognised this, having conducted a customer behaviour survey that concluded that subscribers “increasingly prefer to self-serve online”, although there is of course probably an element of cost saving involved.
TalkTalk discovers customers prefer chat support
The solution for the operator is to spend the next 12 months boosting their online chat services, and thus lowering the number of calls to their existing telephone support lines.
Technology provider LivePerson has teamed up with TalkTalk to help the telecoms provider move from a traditional telephone-based customer service to a more advanced online engagement technology. Over the next 12 months, TalkTalk aims to quadruple the number of customer service enquiries it handles via online chat agents.
The move comes about after TalkTalk’s customer behaviour surveys showed their customers increasingly prefer to self-serve online – but also want to make sure help is on hand if they need it.
“Our customers don’t always want to have to pick up the phone or send an email when they need help online,” commented Sholto Mee, Head of Customer Services for TalkTalk. “They want fast help, in real-time, while they are on-site. We believe that digital customer service is the future, and we want our customers to be at the forefront of that revolution.”
Working with LivePerson, TalkTalk wants to continue to reduce the number of telephone calls into their contact centre, which has halved over the last three years. Over the same period they’ve also seen customer engagement via their online ‘My Account’ service increase dramatically.
With more and more customers choosing to self-serve online, introducing what TalkTalk describes as ‘the human touch’ to online experiences is key.
“As the traditional ways of interacting with customers, like telephone hotlines, become obsolete, it’s vital that we invest in new technologies like LivePerson’s LiveEngage to maintain high levels of customer service in the brave new digital world”, explained Sholto.
TalkTalk’s investment in digital customer service comes off the back of its best ever results for mobile, TV and fibre sign-ups in the last quarter of 2014, with 50,000 people signing up to TalkTalk Mobile and 115,000 to TalkTalk TV.
