The Challenge:

Connect with, and retain, customers who have had a poor service experience and are at a high risk of defecting

The Client:

A nationwide provider of residential & commercial voice & data services, cable television, Internet, and phone

Situation:

The continued proliferation of the Internet and increased bandwidth has provided businesses and consumers with increasingly more vendor options for voice and data services. In confluence with the rapid expansion of choices, there has been a lowering of defection barriers. In a lace where options are high and penalties for defecting are low, service providers must try even harder to retain customers. Our client wished to find new, innovative ways to understand which customers were at risk for defection, and to quickly connect with those customers in hopes of retaining their business and reducing their overall churn rate.

Action:

Mindshare's customer feedback technology was installed within several of their regional customer care centers to allow our client to get immediate, daily feedback from their customers, following an interaction with a call center representative. Customers were given the option to complete a brief, automated survey following their interaction with the agent. During the survey, if a customer entered negative/unfavorable responses the customer was asked if they would like to speak with a manager regarding their issue(s). Managers were then immediately notified of customer callback requests. The notification included all of the customer's survey responses, so that the managers could immediately follow up in an informed fashion.

Results:

Given the estimated annual value of each one of their average customers (~$1,500), in tandem with the estimated financial impact of negative word of mouth (when problems are not resolved quickly), our client achieved an extremely quick ROI, while reducing their churn rate. Approximately 3% of all surveys were callback requests. In this particular region of our clients' business, that equates to ~1,000 customers per month that offered recovery opportunities or annual value of $18 million dollars (1,000 customers/month * 12 months * $1,500/customer).

Even if extremely conservative estimates are applied (as it relates to what percentage of callbacks were actually at risk of defecting, let's assume only 10%,) by using Mindshare's callback program, our client retained an additional 1,200 customers in this region alone each month, valued at $1.8 million dollars in "saved" annual revenues.