Eugene Yeo, Group CIO, MyRepublic, will give a keynote and participate in a panel discussion about leadership in the digital at TM Forum Live! Asia next week.

As the proverbial saying goes, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” Despite a whopping 92 percent of telco executives saying that customer experience is a “top strategic objective,” the results are appalling, with the telecommunications sector ranked as one of the worst when it comes to customer service.

Given the large gap between telco executives’ lofty ambitions for customer centricity and customers’ actual experiences, this begs the question on the true reasons behind this gap and how we can rectify it. Let’s look at three primary contributing factors.

• Incumbent telcos’ siloed mindset (and systems)

Telecommunications providers are typically large organizations and are not immune to common problems that plague such companies in terms of effective strategy rollout and decision-making. One of most common issues is that no one really takes true ownership of driving customer centricity, and each department (regardless of whether they interface with the customer or not) are doing things in their own silos without a central driver to shepherd all the customer-centric initiatives, which often causes the customer experience to look more like a messy patchwork rather than a seamless experience, leaving much to be desired.

At the same time, there exists a complex value fabric in the telecommunications industry, where telecommunications providers work in partnership with other service providers (for example, over-the-top content providers). Ensuring a smooth product delivery with all the other partners in tow is a huge challenge, since inherently telecommunications providers have closed systems that do not interact with other providers’ systems.

• Cost savings – a barrier to customer centricity

Secondly, organizations are cost savings-centric rather than customer-centric – with cost savings as the main driver of the organization, the organization focuses on measures that can be taken to garner better cost savings in product delivery rather than focusing on what matters to the clients. Getting past this significant roadblock to the organization being truly customer-centric requires significant management buy-in and a management champion to drive and see through customer centricity efforts and initiatives across the organization.

• Lack of customer empathy

Thirdly, the decision-makers do not understand the customer experience. What decision-makers should do is make it a point to go through the customer experience and know what it is like to stand in line to get a SIM card, and experience the whole order process for themselves.

Using a hybrid approach

So how can we overcome these problems and start transforming into a customer-centric organization?

There are two schools of thought here: One champions the top-down approach, where the initiative comes from management, then filters down to the people at the bottom of the organizational chart; the other leans towards the bottom-up approach, where the people at the bottom take the initiative and works it upwards to the management, who then make decisions regarding the issue. Both schools of thought have proponents and opponents, as with all controversial issues.

A pragmatic approach would be to have a hybrid of the two, where management lays down the general parameters and customer-centric initiatives and guiding principles but empowers staff interacting with the actual customers to take action accordingly.

Management needs to kick-start the process for customer-centric transformation. By implementing related key performance indicators, initiatives and metrics, management will enforce its commitment to customer centricity and start setting the stage for a truly customer-centric transformation. But rather than simply leaving it solely to management to enforce the philosophy, there should also be “customer advocates” planted in each sector of the organization.

These advocates will be the ones in charge of asking the all-important question: “How does this affect the customer?” They will be the voice of and for the customer in the organization, ensuring that their best interests are kept during the decision-making processes.

Each sector/department should have its own customer advocates so that at each stage of the decision-making process, the customer will have representatives taking care of their interests. In this way, we can start to ensure that the organization is on the path to being a customer-centric one.