Power to the People!

I’ve been in the telecoms and IT industry (is that officially one industry now?) since 1991 and I set-up my own business in 1996. Things really haven’t changed that much in many respects. Without question, the most marked change is the fact that I haven’t had a land-line phone at home since 1996, but in that time I’ve only changed my mobile three times (yes, really). I change my voicemail message about once every two years to try and make myself sound younger. I’m 37.

People change their behaviour very seldom. People don’t like to change unless doing so provides a faster, cheaper, more convenient or more emotionally satisfying result. My mobile is convenient, and while I find text messaging cumbersome I do like the emotional response of anticipation when the phone bleeps (which is largely why SMS took off). I’m typical Generation X, with a feint derision of the youth today and fighting the uncomfortable personal compulsion to have a page on MyFace.

I think one of the seminal experiences of any Generation-X is the time they went round to their mothers house to plug-in the new PC that they had just bought her to avoid having to mend the old one. What a great day that was (you can hear the sarcasm in my voice, can’t you). Information technology has changed a lot, and the future is unquestionably “cloud computing” or Software-as-a-Service for those of us who like to use hyphens a lot. SaaS makes a lot of sense to the consumer, and Communication-as-a-Service is unquestionably a good thing for the modern-day Telco to embrace.

But, most of the applications that I’ve seen.... well, they suck. If I was Bart Simpson I might even be inclined to add that “they both suck and blow”, and that’s a big part of the problem with the telecom industry today. Nobody is building services that I want to buy and use. I may be a tricky customer, but I don’t think Bart and I have too different a view, and I certainly don’t think that the relative size of the early-adopter market will change from one generation to the next. A bad application is a bad application, marketing folks take note; generation Z won’t save you.

Mobile applications are not fun. Playing cricket is fun (if you like playing cricket) and computer games are fun if you like that too, but a mobile application is a tool to do something faster or cheaper, or more conveniently or with a more satisfying emotional response. That’s it, nothing more. A fad is just a fad and it won’t generate you significant or sustainable revenue growth, and having a whole product portfolio crammed full of fads is essentially the same as having a big can full of worms.

The word “innovation” means to do something in a new or better way, and yet it so often becomes confused with the production of meaningless, useless and indulgent drivel. Being “cool” is not enough. Having a cool application loaded on my phone won’t create the same warm-glow inside that I might get from wearing a cool pair of sunglasses, because the psychology is entirely different.

I’m going to give you an example of a useful application that should be built. Then I’m going to tell you how I think it should be built but why it still won’t work. There is no happy ending here, but given the right thought and focus I think this industry (or two) will work out just fine.

The great thing about the telephone is that there can be two of them. I use one and somebody uses another, and we talk. The really bad thing about the telephone is that a person has to be there to answer it (no, I haven’t just re-invented the answer phone). Specifically, let’s think about the contact centre industry – another that hasn’t really changed much in the last decade or two, despite some major bad-press that could be solved through a dash of Telco 2.0 gumption and a pinch of bravery. Make that a handful of bravery.

Contact centres are there to provide service; to answer questions and help people get where they want to go. The faster and more efficient the process and the better the emotional response (or lack of anxiety, frustration or even contempt) the more successful that operation will be. The industry is currently going through another period of “customer experience is king”, i.e. retention strategy rather than cost saving. As a telecom service provider, here’s a real opportunity to add value through a simple application that solves a big problem.

When I phone a company, I want to quickly get through to someone who can deal with my enquiry. If I’m phoning multiple times, then I would rather speak to the same person each time. That’s human nature, but there’s also a good degree of practical benefit too. What I don’t want is to be put into a queue, or speak to someone who can’t help me or asks me to repeat myself, or be forced to speak to a machine when the task I want to complete isn’t appropriate to self-service. What’s worse is when I don’t know which of those evils I might encounter, because I then feel out of control. All of those factors create a significant negative emotional response, but all can be avoided.

Presence and availability information are two of the saving graces of next-generation telecom network architecture, which is good because they’re also dead easy to understand. Basically, if I can see that the person I need to (or rather, want to) talk to at the insurance company is available today and is a five-minute queue away, and if I’m confident that the network will automatically route my call to that person because that routing preference is stored, then I have a choice. I can call now and wait a few minutes, or I can call back later if my reason for making contact is not time-critical, or I can request a call-back if that service is available, or I can select self-service. Whatever, the key is that I have knowledge allowing me to make an informed personal decision of whether to pick up the phone or not, and a positive expectation of what will follow.

This isn’t rocket science – this is just a solid use of technology to solve a real problem that millions of people face every single day, and a problem that puts contact centres out of business every year but especially now when the competition is most fierce. The great news is that it’s a problem that we, the Telco 2.0 industry, can solve. What’s more, the benefits to the contact centre are potentially tremendous so it’s a great candidate for a two-sided business model. I could also explain to you why this service will become one of the most significant social networking opportunities of the decade.

So, why won’t it work? Well, the challenge is that most contact centres like to hide their fears and inefficiencies under a very large bushel. Exploding the contact centre, opening the box for all to peek inside, is not a comfortable thought for most contact centre managers that I speak to. The tide will turn on that, I’m confident, and when it does the market for intelligent network-based contact centre solutions will explode too - right into the hearts and minds of the people that matter.

Power to them indeed.