AT& T Universal Card Services entered the charge card marketplace at a time when the market was grown-up and there were several retail banking corporations dealing with charge card. In such a situation, the company chose to introduce their charge card with a competitive advantage over rivalry. Against a market where in patrons were paying massive annual costs, high rates of interest working together with higher service charges, UCS introduced their product with a very clear cut content that their product was’ Free For Life ‘. As against higher interest rates being charged by others, UCS reviewed their rate of interest based on the altered in prime lending rate and pass away advantage to its clients. On top of it all, the company involved with the customers and supplied unbelievable customer service.
On the face of it, one is certainly ponder as to how UCS could have booked gains when it did not charge any annual fee and continued other charges lower than world markets rates and invested into technology to drive their efficient customer service process. Still it is to be noted that the Company achieved their breakeven within a record 27 months and bagged over 20 million patrons within two years and went on to become one of the label leaders in the market within a short time.
The success of the business received from two factors that were pursued by the management relentlessly to drive their business to the top. One was to focus and continually is currently working on internal operational efficiencies and the second ingredient was to go all out to provide value through unmatched customer service.
Given the fact that the Company was not accusing annual fee and another charges too were lower than rival, the profits had to come from other sources. The administration was smart-alecky enough to realize that they needed to work on lowering their costs by eliminating wastage and faults in their operational procedures. Internally the company focused intensely on training and standardizing their operational process to induce them error free. With the reduction of mistakes and wrongdoings, we are able to manage to save over 15-20% of the costs.
On the customer service front, the company treated remarkable service to be the ordinary standard. By their superior customer service, they could are to be able to bring down the attrition rate of a user to 2% as against the industry average of over 15%. Every patron retention added to the bottom line of operations.
UCS strived to provide real value services to the customers. “Theres” several cases where the customer service senior executives and managers of the company proactively helped clients in times of necessity. In one prevalence where the business faced a computer breakdown at a vendor’s premise ensuing in annoyance to over 40,000 customers in the field, the company is reported to have called each and every customer to help them with transactions, called the merchant to authorize transactions over telephone and even sent these patrons a ten dollar endow cheque apologizing for the inconvenience.
The company could enviably boast of the fact that it received more number of complimentary letters as compared to complaint letters. With unrivaled customer services, it constructed solid relationship with clients on long term basis.
Clearly, the company had gained from its strategy of constructing product leadership by providing superior value proposition to the customer and by prosecuting operational excellence and discipline .