From the entrepreneur’s corner (23): I understand the TelCo might be in clinical death, but their bot should have survived
This TelCo is almost in clinical death, on my opinion. When a (reputed) Western player and a major regional strategic united their forces a few years back, while still having the state in the board and its cap table, we’ve all imagined they’ll now be able to provide better, eventually cheaper services, top notch tech systems, quality online channels, flawless wireless and the latest in mobility — if not more goodies. Nowadays, they’ve put it up for sale (rumors are that the very few potential buyers are dragging their feet,) are shutting down subsidiaries — like the recently announced plan to shut down the local IT systems co, with just a couple of specialists in its ranks and a few million Euro t/o — while the subscription price has exploded more than 50% over the last months, digital TV interruptions are a normality, media-boxes fail, (quality) services lack, and their outsourced sales agents practice predatory/abusive policies.
The co has failed at the basics. Instead of focusing on customers’ feedback and using it to improve their services and make sure every customer is a satisfied one (although in reality that cannot be achieved,) they’ve only focused on replacing part of the humans with bots that cannot solve the issues, and therefore miss on the validation of demand for their products and services. In the end, their market share is shrinking and if the customers are not happy, they might not even have a market in the future.
In addition, looks like their call centers’ agents are using predatory/abusive contract renewal policies, like selling my 80+ yo mom, a few weeks ago, a mobile subscription for two years, when she does not have a mobile terminal, cannot use it anyway, and mentioned over the fix line she’s not interested (even if the mobile subscription was presented as being a gift/for free with the occasion of contract renewal.) The result: a retired person forced to pay for two years some additional Euros per month, without even using TelCo’s mobile service.
What determined me to write a couple of lines this time, is the result of a 45 min waiting time to the above TelCo’s bot line; I gave up in the end, realizing their problems are way bigger than I imagined if there’s such a humans line. This type of service only adds friction for users.
Industries like telecom, fintech, healthcare, retail and others have quietly adopted the chatbot technology to free up busy professionals’ time and offer guided, personalized experiences to consumers. Although many chatbots didn’t meet users expectations, they haven’t entirely fallen short (in this context, you may want to read a more detailed analysis by CB Insights, with lessons from the “failed” chatbot revolution and about industries where the tech is making a comeback, here.)
As many of us have noted, there are many cases where there is a gap between what the (chatbot) service promised and what it actually offers. Even the majors failed; for ex. Facebook scaled back work on its flagship “M” virtual assistant after it revealed that M had failed in handling 70% of all user requests; Google similarly admitted that it used humans in call centers to make its assistant work.
However, there are legitimate applications for the chatbot technology, especially for bots with a more specific focus. Any task that is language-based, highly structured, and time-consuming could benefit from chatbot systematization. This can help free up human workers’ time for more complex tasks, such as understanding customer pain points and building relationships.
For the subject TelCo, building an appropriate customer service chatbot would reduce the overall amount of calls being made into its call center, cut call center costs, help enable an increase in employee productivity, and improve customer satisfaction. Chatbots can be also a powerful tool for converting the customer-centricity into sales.
There’s something more to talk about telecom and tech, but I’ll leave it for the next time; and hope this laggard-in-quality-co’s issues shall be solved once they find new owners and a better country CEO takes on the list of problems.
Update: four days after I filed a complaint on the TelCo’s social media profile, an agent called my mom; till date, the mobile subscription still exists.
My today’s preferred: Adalo — Build apps for every platform, without code.
