According to Intuwave, device flaws and poor customer service highlight the testing and support needs of a new breed of handsets which have recently arrived: smartphones.
Following up on quantitative research from February which showed that only 40% of IT managers had confidence in smartphones as a business tool, Intuwave has conducted focus groups of business smartphone users that highlighted concern with smartphone quality and customer service.
According to Intuwave, its results point to core 'hygiene' factors not being addressed by device manufacturers and mobile network operators which are hitting the industry’s bottom line through increased product returns, lower service adoption and increased support costs.
Andrew Wyatt, vice president of strategic marketing at Intuwave, said, "These are not just ‘nice to haves’: inadequately tested devices lead to product returns or - worst case scenario - product recalls that are costly and embarrassing while poorly set up phones are a key reason why operator support costs are set to escalate. Smartphones are growing in complexity and taking on many of the functions traditionally associated with the PC, so the industry needs a way of applying mature, automated testing procedures and the remote 'diagnose and fix' tools associated with the PC world to mobile devices. If this isn’t achieved, then the entire industry will simply haemorrhage money as smartphones are adopted in greater numbers."
Key problems encountered by members of the focus group included core data services - such as MMS - not working properly, the complexity of setting up services and poor quality of support. One Human Resources manager commented, "Feedback has been mixed; as a tool smartphones are very useful but the set up has caused more than a few headaches." This is not the response that the industry needs if its plans to increase business usage of the advanced data service functionality offered by smartphones are to be realised.
Wyatt continued, "Business users are a mobile operators’ most profitable and least price-sensitive market segment and a logical consumer of the advanced data services that are now available. However, if services don’t work out of the box as they should then people simply won’t use them. Addressing testing and customer and service issues will therefore not only cut costs but increase revenues."
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