Road To China: The Cost of Lost Communication

During my trip to Pudong Enterprise Centre in Shanghai, I was very lucky to be able to address a room of Government officials and technology innovators regarding the issues that surround our increasing reliance on mobile communication.

In the UK, an SME business would be at a distinct disadvantage taking their mobile contract direct with the networks, despite the more popular opinion to the contrary. The mobile networks don’t invest resources in customer service to the levels expected from an SME where mobile communication is business critical. What happens if a field-based employee loses a phone, breaks a phone, or has a technical issue? They grind to a halt and in any business a loss of productivity is a loss of profitability. Time is money. How long does it then take to sort that problem out? How many other members of staff have to be involved? As an SME you would be contacting a mobile network call centre just like everyone else. To outsource that stress for your business and only have one dedicated point of contact makes the most logical sense.

Emerald was founded on the basis that we keep our customers operational. 24 hour replacements on mobile devices, a fully trained technical support team, and extensive cost management experience mean we improve efficiencies and reduce costs for every business we work with. So I asked the group at Pudong, with their advocation of new ‘smart working’ with mobile devices, what support options they had in place for every business and government department where voice and data transfer were now critical.

The answer was they did not have a solution. They all recognised that in China, like the UK, the mobile networks were actually removing investment from customer service meaning SMEs and smaller government departments would struggle without an experienced and dedicated member of staff trained in all aspects of mobile technology including technical support, device manufacturers, network cost management, and contract negotiation. Following this meeting I had a very successful one-to-one with a potential business partner in China who recognised that this is an area they could expand into domestically and in return they could offer the same high levels of support to Emerald’s international customers.

There is no charge to our customers for our UK based service. Emerald provide independent advice, ongoing support, and a relationship based management of your business mobile communication which is going to be increasingly important as we, like China, move to smarter and more flexible ways of working. If you don’t currently have a business critical level of service, it’s worth asking yourself how much a loss of communication would cost your business for just one working day.

Only then will you realise, as my audience did in Pudong, why investing time to find the right support partner for your business is so crucial.

This was first published in 2016