Last week Vienna played host to the CEM in Telecoms European Summit 2015. Attracting over 100 delegates, the event had a strong focus on how operators are perceived by their customers, the relationship between marketing and CEM teams, and the process of launching new products and services into the marketplace. The SysMech team were in full force at the event; here are our highlights.
Changing the product launch process to optimise the customer experience
Sandra Sommerkorn | Vodafone Germany
As the second speaker on day 1, Sandra dived straight in, focusing on the process for introducing new products and services at Vodafone Germany. Today, all products pass through their novel Product Experience Design (PED) process, but this was not always the case. Historically marketing would drive all new product options, whether it be a new bundle or a short promotion. They dealt directly with the technical teams to launch the product into the marketplace. The new process introduced a third element to the mix; CEM. The CEM branch ensures that the customer experience was considered at every stage of the process, and reviewed on a regular basis. CEM metrics have also been introduced to ensure customer centricity was a measure of success, including frequency of contact, time to first contact resolution and NPS.
The three E’s of CEM – Empathy, Experience and Exclusivity
Michaela Jarisch | MTS Group
MTS are the number 1 operator in Russia, with 100 million subscribers. But with an ARPU of just 3 euros (European average = 21.5 euros), they depend on this massive volume to remain successful. So to keep customers happy and retain market share, they have introduced three CEM values:
- Empathy
- Experience
- Exclusivity
These are driven from the top, and are central to a wide range of campaigns ranging from recommended pricing packages to retail discount schemes. To support this, the business have had to invest in a wide range of tools, but of course they have inevitably proven their worth.
A fresh approach to loyalty programmes
Stijn Martens | Mobile Vikings
Mobile Vikings introduced a novel approach to the customer experience with their community driven campaigns. Their system is simple, customers partake in their partner schemes to earn Viking Points, which they can then redeem for free top-ups. Maximising on social media, they have seen significant growth on a daily basis, with over 300 new subscribers daily. Stijn presentation was one of the highlights of the event, demonstrating the fresh approach taken by Mobile Vikings, not only as a standalone campaign, but a whole company ethos. Some of their best operations can be seen on their YouTube channel.
In almost every presentation, personalisation was highlighted as a trend which is not only popular, but is now becoming expected. Taking it one step further, many operators are now looking to prediction technologies to pre-empt subscriber’s upcoming needs. To achieve this, intelligent data correlation is required to build behaviour models, monitor trends, and predict future subscriber actions. This needs to be highly accurate to ensure subscribers are getting the right information at the right time, leading to the desired conversion. This ‘intelligent’ approach is where the future of CEM lies, and requires intelligent big data management solutions to be a true success.