e directly between consumers and providers or, when challenges or impasses occur, they are often best managed indirectly through intervention by government regulatory agencies. When small problems arise, the consumer is often able to call the customer service organization and get the problem rectified. However, what if the problem is a difficult one? What if the provider does not want to respond to the customer's problem or just doesn't want to respond to it quickly? What options does the consumer have? For the most part, in a monopolistic situation, if the consumer withholds payment, the phone service is disconnected and there is no alternative provider to help out. So, ultimately, the consumer must go to the government and file a complaint with the regulatory agency. The agency will then contact the company to try to rectify the situation. The Monopoly Consumer Response Model This creates a customer relationship model with consumers on one side, customer service and sales people in the middle, and regulators on the other side. This model, though complicated and expensive, ultimately gets the job done. To keep regulators from issuing fines or allowing competition into the market, providers have the incentive to work hard to keep the number of customer complaints to a minimum. They will try to promote an attitude of responsiveness and support for consumers and they will tend to do as much as possible to keep consumers from going to the regulators with problems. eXcellence in Telecommunications The Telco Churn Handbook Customer Service Customers Regulatory Agency Problems Figure 16-1: Monopoly Consumer Response Model What is most interesting about this model is the nature of the relationship between customer service and the consumer. Basically, the job of customer service is not to fix the consumer's problem, but rather to get the consumer to admit that the provider is not responsible and that the consumer should not file a complain with regulators. THE RETAIL CONSUMER RESPONSE MODEL FOR TELCO Clearly, the monopol