Customer Self-Care - "You're on Your Own" or "You Asked for It!"?

This week I'm at the TeleStrategies conference on Customer Self-Care and Customer Experience Management. There have been a lot of good talks, mostly from the carriers. I picked up some good date - peak of self-care use is in the 28 year old crowd, dropping off fast with age after that - self-care users are 14% less likely to churn - only about 13% of self-care users are web, with IVR much more - when a customer has a good experience, they tell, on average, 3.5 people. If they have a bad experience, they tell 7! - electronic bill presentment is about as important to medium to large businesses as on-line service ordering is. But what is really striking is the attitude of many of the carriers. While companies such as Allstate, Zappos, Netflix and others talk about how to enhance the customer experience through self-care and good CEM, many (but certainly not all) of the carriers use words more about how to move customers to self-care because it is cheaper. One speaker for a major mobile carrier was actually brave enough to describe an abortive program where they charged their low-end prepaid customers $2 to call a CSR! That didn't last long - it immediately increased their defection rate! Maybe more good stuff today.