In fact, newer competitive carriers were the first to offer customers online interaction tools. From their inception, DSL carriers offered customers the ability to check online to see if service was available in their area. The service included a reverse lookup that would tell companies from whom their calls came. A year later, the company added ordering and trouble-ticket capabilities. But we believed that we could change the customer experience.
Users are so much more sophisticated today.
They don't need or want to talk to customer-service representatives who can't translate what they're saying. Historically, it costs carriers four times more to acquire a new customer than to maintain an existing one. Since CRM exists to lower churn, it is ironic that, in the industry with 25 to 30 percent churn, more hasn't been done. It has been adopted at a much faster rate, and historically to a much larger extent, by other vertical industries, such as financial services. But carriers are starting to offer more services.