Better tech means bigger user ask

Lots of different developments have knock-on effects for customer service. One of them, it turns out, is the steadily improving capabilities of mobile networks.

As mobile services have grown faster and more reliable, customers have begun placing greater importance on the quality of customer support those services provide, the latest annual Acquisition and Retention study from Nokia has found. In fact, customers say the care they receive from mobile companies has a 60-percent greater impact on their loyalty than it did just two years ago.

According to Bhaskar Gorti, Nokia’s president of applications and analytics, this latest study — the 10th edition — highlights something that doesn’t always grab headlines in the highly competitive mobile industry: what companies do day by day to attract and keep customers.

“Our study shows how important that work is — and also how challenging it is as customers, attached to their phones, demand higher levels of service,” Gorti said upon the study’s publication earlier this month.

This year’s study also found that information and service security is increasingly important to customers in both mature and still-developing (“transition”) markets. In fact, nearly half — 47 percent — say they would change service providers if they experienced a security breach.

Bottom line: It appears that, the more advanced a company’s flagship services become, the higher customers’ service and support expectations rise. The next area where we’re likely to see that have an impact on customer service, according to the Nokia study, is in the fast-developing IoT, or Internet of Things.