Europe
: A new NOP survey commissioned by Olista, the service experience
assurance company, reveals that users who encounter problems in using
new mobile data services will simply give up rather than seek assistance.
Inset
is Oren Glanz quoted below.
According
to the survey of 1000 adults carried out inSeptember 2005, 64% of
those who had actually tried to use a mobile dataservice such as picture
messaging, ring tones and gaming downloads confessed that they would
give up trying after one or two attempts. A mere 2% claimed that they
would actually seek assistance from their operator or content provider
and 25% said they would carry on trying until it worked.
The survey follows
on from research conducted earlier this year, also
commissioned by Olista, that revealed that 77% of phone users have
never used any mobile data services, and of those that had, only 12%
professed to be completely satisfied with the experience. The focus
of the latest research was on understanding how mobile data users
react to poor user experience.
According to Oren
Glanz, CEO of Olista, "The findings make salutary reading for
mobile operators, content providers and ISPs seeking to increase the
take-up of mobile data services. The monies that they are investing
in call centre and self-care solutions are not working, as mobile
phone use is often an impulsive activity and the majority of the public
are not prepared to continue trying or seek help when the services
fail to work."
When quizzed on
what would encourage them to use more mobile data services, lower
prices and easier to use services were top of the list with 53% and
43% of respondents, whilst 32% also felt that better help and advice
at point of sale would influence them positively.
"The survey
highlights the need for a proactive approach to customer care. Operators
need to be able to discover a mobile data problem before the customers
know about it and contact them to solve the issue or they face them
never returning to the service again" states Glanz. For example
by contacting a subscriber about a failure such as a MMS that did
not reach its destination and explaining how to fix it before the
subscriber is even aware of the problem the operator can turn the
customer's experience into a positive one. It should never be too
late to assure service experience and understanding the mobile content
experience from the end user's point of view can be the key to ensuring
customers use your service again".