Unrepresentative data on battery life is leading to operator customer service departments fielding four times as many calls on the issue than in 2008

Smartphone manufacturers are leaving customers disappointed with their operators by not quoting battery performance in a way that reflects day-to-day use, according to a study published today.

Customer experience specialist WDS analysed the battery life of 50 of the top smartphones launched over the past year and compared them alongside two million technical support calls taken on behalf of global mobile operators and handset manufacturers.

The findings showed that, for the majority, the battery life of handsets was not quoted in a way that represented how consumers use their devices. This has led to operators fielding four times as many calls regarding battery performance than they received in 2008. As a result, customer service calls relating to battery usage have now risen to make up ten per cent of all hardware related technical support calls.

Despite activities such as web browsing, watching videos and using downloadable apps have become an everyday part of smartphone use, their impact on battery performance is largely excluded from the data published by manufacturers. Only two of the 50 devices that were reviewed by WDS included information on expected battery life for web browsing -  Apple’s iPhone 4S and Nokia’s N9. Instead, consumers are typically left to make comparisons based on stand-by time and 2G talk-time.

“The majority of manufacturers simply publish stand-by and talk-time figures, which have the lowest drain on smartphone battery performance,” explained Tim Deluca-Smith, VP of marketing at WDS. “This means that when consumers start using their smartphones in earnest – downloading and using apps and browsing the web – they often find their battery lasts less than they expected.”

Another report from J.D. Power and Associates, released in March 2012, also suggested that those manufacturers who do publish more accurate battery life data benefit from customer loyalty, with Apple ranking highest in customer satisfaction among smartphone manufacturers.

“A vital aspect of customer experience is setting the right expectation. No single manufacturer can really overcome the limitations of today’s batteries, but they can take the lead in better informing customers,” added Deluca-Smith. “This will not only boost satisfaction, but will also save money for them and their mobile operator partners. Battery life is not something that a consumer can gauge in-store. Simply stating that a device has a 1700mAh battery is meaningless; performance data needs to be in line with real-world use.”

Xerox acquires WDS

Business process outsourcing provider and printer manufacturer Xerox has acquired customer experience specialist WDS. The firm said that it intends to use WDS’s expertise in the telecommunications industry to strengthen its portfolio of customer care solutions.

WDS captures, analyses and manages technical support interactions across thousands of different mobile device types, using a proprietary cloud-based platform called GlobalMine.

The firm’s CEO David Ffoulkes-Jones will stay on at the company after the acquisition. He said: “By focusing on the customer experience, wireless brands can drive greater loyalty and differentiation. With Xerox, we now have the ability to accelerate our global expansion, add more value to our customers and deliver greater opportunities to our employees.”

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

David Ffoulkes-Jones, CEO of CEM solutions provider WDS

David Ffoulkes-Jones, CEO of CEM solutions provider WDS, shares his views on how operators can develop customer experience management into a true competitive differentiator.

There is more than a dash of understatement in David Ffoulkes-Jones’ observation that, “being the CEO of a network operator right now would be a challenge.” In a verbal sketch of the industry, Ffoulkes-Jones, chief executive of customer experience management specialist WDS, depicts mobile operators battling on a number of fronts—internal as well as external—and struggling to maintain their lines.

“They’ve got their shareholders, which are probably the larger pension funds, in a depressed market, saying they want cash so they can afford to make their pension payments. They’ve got their engineers complaining about capacity issues caused by the marketing department subsidising smartphones onto the network and they’ve got the post-sales support teams reporting that those smartphones cost an arm and a leg to support,” he says. “And on top of all these negatives, they’re already deep into the price game, commoditising the product as it stands.”

In this scenario, he says, it becomes increasingly difficult for the operator to convince its shareholders that a multi-billion dollar investment in new network technology like LTE makes financial sense. Of course, once one operator makes this move in any given market, the rest have little choice but to follow. But this relegates the network to the level of a hygiene factor for consumers comparing operators with one another. Meanwhile, the world of content and applications, which operators had expected to enable a new wave of differentiation, has become dominated by over the top providers.

Against this backdrop a new competitive arena has emerged, he says, and it is customer experience management.

“As an operator, while I have to spend money on the network because without it I won’t have customers, I have to accept that the operator down the road is going to do the same thing. So it is not a point of differentiation. I also have to tariff and market the products in the right way, manage them in the right way and get my post-sales services right. I need to create stickiness—and the customer experience, knowing the customer, delivering a great service, managing them in the way that’s right for them—will create that stickiness.”

Today’s mobile operators have a degree of customer interaction that would have been unthinkable just ten years ago. Historically—especially in the days when 12-month contracts were routine—an operator might feasibly have interacted with a customer only at the point of uptake and the point of departure or retention. And if there was contact between these points, it went largely un-analysed.

Today, due in part to the increasing depth and complexity of the mobile experience, many customers interact with their operators’ support teams far more frequently. Invariably, in the wake of each of these interactions, an automated CRM system pings the user a text message asking them to rate the experience. Websites do the same thing, while technical reports from the network feed in information on device connection rates and dropped calls. The net result is a far greater volume of data on the customer experience—which, on the face of it, should be a good thing for any operator looking to put CEM at the heart of their brand differentiation.

But, says Ffoulkes-Jones, information only has value if it is properly exploited—and even then that value can vary significantly. Furthermore, the increase in data volume could be just as easily be a burden as a bonus.

“The challenge is getting a clear message out of all of the noise generated by these multiple touch-points,” he says. “Even if I can get all of this data, and process it in a very clear and concise way, who do I give it to? And is that person set up to receive it? Network operators—and OEMs—traditionally run very siloed environments but I need to be able to deliver this information into an organisation that is capable of making decisions and acting on those decisions in an effective way. So there’s real change required, structurally and culturally, to create an industry that becomes far more customer experience focused than it is today. The customer experience needs to be managed horizontally, as a process.”

The type of feedback generated by automated survey tools in the immediate wake of a customer interaction needs to be treated with caution, Ffoulkes-Jones says, describing it as of “questionable value”. While he says that it is an absolute requirement for operators to survey their customers, he points out that text-based feedback, for example, provides only the snapshot of a moment.

“It’s not a measure of the customer experience, it’s a measure of how they feel right at that minute,” he says. “If they’ve had a tremendous transaction within the operator, they can feel really positive. But the next day they could get a dropped call and then feel terribly negative. So these data are important but they are not the only things that operators should be looking at.

“A truer test would be looking at the churn rate, the level it’s at and whether it’s trending in the right direction. But even that isn’t a completely safe basis for assumption because it could just be that the operator was the first to launch the iPhone. O2 has one of the lowest churn rates in the UK and I wonder if that’s because they’re a great network, or because they were the first to market with the iPhone,” he says.

Data derived from the network can also be improved upon, he says. Operators may well carry out compliance testing for devices that they want to offer to their customers but ticking the box doesn’t go far enough. “How many times do they test the device against the experience their customers have had of the father of that device previously? That would help operators start to understand, from a user’s perspective, whether that device is really appropriate for the network.”

The trouble with customer experience is that, while operators labour to meet KPIs on everything from dropped calls to complaint resolution, customers add an abstract, emotional layer to the mix that is far more difficult to manage. While this can’t be controlled, says the WDS CEO, it can be influenced. If an operator works to build brand equity with its customer, by consistently executing well on its customer interactions and by learning and improving, then they can be honest with their customers about their successes. If, on the other hand, the operator is promising to deliver something that cannot be delivered, a gap is created through which customer loyalty can seep away.

“That’s why we would say that customer experience isn’t about the user interface, or the fact that you’ve done network compliance testing, or your dropped call rates. It’s about all of these things and more. It has to be a continuous and relentless drive towards building better and better services for the customer—that’s how operators can build that loyalty,” he says.

Competition for loyalty is intensifying, though. Over the top players have increased the complexity and depth of the mobile experience but are also threatening the operator community’s control of the customer relationship. One by one, core territories that the operators sought to retain as their own—think services, content and billing—have been colonised by third party providers. But Ffoulkes-Jones argues that this creates an opportunity for mobile operators, as well as a threat, because the over the top players are not making the customer experience a core focus.

“They’re saying they’ll have a good deal of the revenue but they don’t fancy any of the costs, which is a great business model if you can work it,” he says. “But if you look at Google, they have the OS and they’ll sell the apps but they’re not assuming responsibility for the experience of the whole solution. So the operators have the opportunity to step in and tell users that they should be loyal to them because they will manage the experience and make sure that it is reflective of their brand.”

But if operators do pursue this approach, they will not be alone. At the retail end at least, they are likely to soon have competition from independent players. “Some retailers could take a truly independent view of the customer and say that, of everything that is on offer, a particular product is most suitable,” he explains. “That solution could be a television, a laptop or a tablet, or it could be a network, a device or an application. That’s not how it is yet, but there are lots of other companies that could get into this space if it’s not taken up by the operators.”

Under fire from all sides as they are in Ffoulkes-Jones’ sketch of the industry, this is the last thing that operators will want to hear. And he suggests that they can only ensure their continued relevance by weighting the customer’s experience such that it occupies a complete 360-degree world view. “It’s not the only information you’ll need to make the right decisions, but it’s a significant chunk of it if you want to ensure that you are delivering an experience that’s reflective of your brand,” he says.

The customer experience will be a major area of focus for operators in 2012

The customer experience will  be a major area of focus for operators in 2012, following a dawning realisation that those companies that do not give their customers the time, investment and focus they require will see them defect to rivals in an increasingly competitive market.

With several features on how to manage and improve the customer experience coming up, telecoms.com has tapped customer management specialist WDS for ten predictions for the industry in 2012.

Data sharing: With more and more connected devices entering our lives, ‘connected homes’ are set to gain traction over 2012. According to WDS, if mobile operators want to compete, they will need to start getting more creative, and generous, with their data sharing policies.

“Consumers don’t want to consciously think about the device or network to which they’re attached. They want to buy a data allowance and use it (at their discretion) across the multiple devices on which they’ve come to rely,” the company said.

Smartphones galore:  Along with the evolution of open-source operating systems, such as Android, lower component costs, and an insatiable consumer appetite for mobile products there have been many new handset manufacturers entering the market, largely located across Asia, and that trend shows no sign of slowing down over 2012.

Smartphones aiding purchasing decisions: The use of the smartphones will continue to enhance the physical practice of shopping. With the advent of MMS, consumers began to take photos of an item in store, and send it to a partner or friend for opinion. Today, they can quickly scan a barcode using their smartphone to view  user reviews, price comparisons and retailers within walking distance. For retailers, this places greater pressure to compete instantaneously and not only with their physical competitors but online ones too.

Google to lobby for patent laws overhaul: With patent disputes over smartphone technologies dominating headlines in the industry of 2011, WDS believes that 2012 will see Google drawn further into legal dramas. The firm predicts that Google will orchestrate a mass collaborative lobbying effort to bring about regulation of software patents to restore competitive technology design and evolution in the smartphone market.

Nokia’s comeback: Although Apple and Google, with its Android partners, incited the take up of smartphones, Nokia could join them in becoming a major player in the smartphone market in 2012.

“When a perceived ‘lower’ social group, in this case the mass market, adopts a product, it ceases to be desired by the leaders in the perceived ‘higher’ social group, in this case, the innovative early adopters,” explained WDS. “Has the iPhone had its day? Is it simply too clichéd? Probably not just yet, but we certainly think that there’s a growing base of consumers looking for something new.” Nokia, with its new Windows Mobile handsets, may just offer this to the market over the coming year.

Brand loyalty to create differentiation: With handset manufacturers struggling to make their smartphones stand out from the crowd, 2012 will see OEM brands look for more defining USPs. According to WDS: “We believe this will be in the form of an optimised cross-device user experience across the OEMs full device portfolio.” The firm cited Sony as an example, which recently bought Ericsson’s stake in their Sony-Ericsson joint venture. It will now bring its smartphone division under the parent brand alongside its other consumer electronics and may look to integrate its product offering to create a unified experience, in a bid to boost brand loyalty. 2012 is set to see some OEMs proceed with collaborations across different device categories and software platforms in a bid to remain competitive in this changing landscape.

Consumers go over the top: Since internet-connected handsets first made their way onto the market, VoIP and chat solutions have been considered a threat to operators’ core revenue; and in 2012, this is only set to increase. Consumers are now equipped with faster smartphones connected to faster networks, and this will make using such services even more attractive. However, while threats exist, operators have control over both infrastructure and billing relationships and will need to find a compromise that protects core revenue while protecting customer loyalty.

Death of the netbook: Netbooks are yesterday’s news and the focus of manufacturers on tablets will signal the death of the notebook, according to WDS.

Emphasis on customer experience: With price wars over the years making the mobile handset market increasingly price sensitive, operators cannot continue to invest and encourage innovation under this degree of price pressure. They must reverse the trend and win back customer loyalty based not on price, but service and brand value.

Windows Phone 8: While the hype around the tablet market has focused in on the battle between iOS and Android, Windows Phone 8 could represent a very real and credible threat to the iPad3 launch, which is expected this year. Microsoft’s upcoming OS, Windows Phone 8, will be compatible with both Intel and ARM architectures, meaning it will run on both PC and mobile.

“It may be a little late to the tablet party but with wide industry support, Microsoft could just present the most credible threat to Apple’s dominance yet,” said WDS.

Telecoms.com is publishing feature length content on customer experience management in the telecoms space in February. Sign up to get it in your inbox.

Android handset returns cost the carrier market $2bn per year

The return of Android devices by consumers is costing operators around $2bn per year, as they struggle to manage consumer expectations, according to research released this week.

A study conducted by wireless experience management experts WDS has revealed that of the four leading mobile operating systems, there is a higher than average propensity for hardware failure on Android-based devices. Fourteen per cent of technical support calls on Android relate to hardware, compared with 11 per cent for Windows Phone, seven per cent for iOS and six per cent for BlackBerry OS.

The $2bn figure is arrived at as WDS estimates that each handset return costs operators around $80 on average, taking into account factors such as who in the supply chain pays for returns, restocking, restocking and transportation.

However, according to WDS’ marketing VP, Tim Deluca-Smith, the handset return rate is not attributable to problems with Google’s software, but rather how handset manufacturers are using the Android platform and how operators are promoting the Android user experience.

“One thing we must be absolutely clear on is that our analysis does not find any inherent fault with the Android platform. Its openness has enabled the ecosystem to grow to a phenomenal size, at a phenomenal rate, and it’s this success that is proving challenging,” he said.

In a WDS report, entitled “Controlling the Android”, the firm found that the introduction of low-cost hardware, a variety of software customisations and the process for delivering OS updates to consumers all impacted the return rate of Android devices.

“A lot of operators treat Android as a standard implementation with a consistent, uniform customer experience – just as they do with iPhone and BlackBerry products. But given the open nature of Android, this of course isn’t the case.”

Deluca-Smith added that the Android customer experience differs hugely between devices and as a result, operators must alter the way in which Android devices are sold and supported, and must consider factors such as the hardware build and quality of components.

Deluca-Smith also advised operators to also use bargaining power that arises from hardware faults to negotiate better deals from handset manufacturers. He cited the example of Angry Birds creator Rovio Mobile, which began getting complaints that the game was running poorly on a number of Android handsets.

It discovered that some handsets with poor specifications were unable to deliver a quality gaming experience, and was one reason that customers were returning Android handsets to the operator. The game developer subsequently pulled the app and launched the less feature-intensive Angry Birds Lite, to run smoothly on those handsets.

“An operator should monitor which handsets are being returned and for which hardware faults,” explained Deluca-Smith. “They can then go to the handset manufacturers and say: ‘Your last handset cost us $10m due to returns, whereas other manufacturers handsets cost us less than half of that – what are you going to do about it?’”

Operators should also invest time and resources in educating customers, he added, in order to better manage their expectations. He advised that at the point of sale, operators should explain to customers that enabling wifi, 4G, 3G and Bluetooth all at once will shorten battery life considerably, for example, and certain apps will only be available on higher-spec handsets.

“Operators need to help customers get over the perception that Android is just Android. It’s not – the Android experience can vary from one handset to another.”

He added that they should also consider which handsets to offer more carefully.

“Too many operators are offering handsets to plug a gap in their product portfolio. Often, they just want to be able to offer a cheap smartphone, but at the end of the day, you get what you pay for. It’s fine to offer a low-cost handset, but the consumer needs to be aware of where that product fits in the portfolio and that it is not a high-spec device. The accountability is on operators to position their products correctly, and for this reason, they should also invest in testing the capability of the hardware and ensuring they sell quality handsets.”