Brand Imaging Through Contact Centers

How many times have you struggled with your cell phone company’s call center to stop those unwanted calls? You get a ‘promise’, only to receive one more call while you are driving or eating! The recent Vodafone advertisement is a stark reminder how a call center is the key catalyst for brand building and sustaining the market image of a gigantic service industry like telecom. FMCG and Consumer Durable companies can build, stabilize and promote their brands by advertising and strengthening their product design and marketing. Their “touch and feel” factor with a long product life gives them an edge in customer acquisition and retention over the service industry. They still require help lines to provide customers with support; however their contact centers mainly take care of the product and not the brand. A dealer would not stop stocking Coca Cola or Hindustan Unilever products just because he did not have a good experience when he called up the helpline. Nor would you throw away your Whirlpool machine if the mechanic can only come after two days!

You would not recommend your cell phone service provider or your internet service provider to friends and family if you come across an obnoxious or ill informed person when you called up their support numbers. A satisfied customer drives repeat business and everyone in this sector worth their salt realizes that. Brand building in the service sector is indeed a painstaking activity but once achieved the rewards are high. The single customer calling for a seemingly “petty issue” who is shooed away by a callous call center exec might have just cost them ten new subscribers. A consumer seldom expects cent percent perfect service but wants a platform where he can be heard. The basic human tendency, to be satisfied with the feeling that a large multi-million dollar company hears your concerns and helps you, is too important to be ignored by any company. That friend of mine who just relocated to Delhi will have no option but to choose Vodafone as his cell phone service provider when I insist how faultless their service and support has been, in my experience, over the last year. Every happy customer becomes a potential ‘free of cost’ brand ambassador with enough clout to influence the decision of at least three other persons.

In the cut-throat competition of the services sector in general and telecom industry in specific, a contact center not only allows you to build your brand but also allows you to gauge customer needs, requirements and pains, enabling proactive measures to go one-up on the competition! This enables a ‘first mover advantage’ to a customer focused provider. With the telecom sector going through increasing deregulation, the average Indian customer is realizing a fact he never knew existed, “Consumer is the King.” The investments required to get their contact centers up to the mark should be insignificant considering that the big and medium players are going through a boom time. It’s not the cost, but the intention which would matter. Vodafone realizes that, so do others. The time for their Contact Centers to stand up and get counted among the rest of the world class ones is NOW, they’d better be ready!