Toolkit

Story: Free support for smartphones tipped to end

Posted by: Anonymous (Tuesday 9 December 2003, 4:15 PM)

Having spent some time launching a Product into the marketplace and working with Mobile operators to provide support, it is clear that the majority of Operators need to stop and think about future support strategy.

The trend for mobile support calls will move towards that of an IT helpdesk scenerio. This means that staff need to be trained to cope with the IT-type issues arising as consumers add software to their handsets. Todays support centres are ill equipped and many staff are not suited to proving IT support. This means that a higher level of staff are required - meaning larger salaries (or more outsourcing to India?)

We could - of course - see end users migrating to those mobile operators that offer the best support. I recall a 3G operator wanting to differentiate their service by a high level of support - I am sure very few if any of their Customers would say they acheived their objective!