Volker Held: Enriching the customer experience

Volker, can you start by explaining what you mean by "customer experience"? Is this a new idea?

In the industry, many people talk about, for example, customer service or the technical quality of the service provided, like coverage and connection speeds. But when we work with the concept "customer experience," we take a 360° view and look at all the touch points a supplier has with its customers. Our aim is to improve every interaction.

I would say "customer experience" is about improving every point of interaction between a service provider and its customers, from service quality and service offering to customer care and billing.

Would you say the aim is to make things simpler for the consumer?

Yes, we take the perspective of the end user and look at how their lives can be simplified to make them more satisfied and loyal.

For example, new technical options and features do not necessarily make the client's life easier. Operators need to make their services easy to use and simple to understand. Customers want to find out which services are right for them, and what the benefits are for them.

You need to make it easy for the customer to choose, by taking their needs as your starting point. For example, the pricing has to be clear.  

And customer care must be easy to reach and they should be able to fix most problems during the first call.

Can you talk a little about the importance of data management in this context?

First of all, market research shows that 87 percent of operators do not have a unified view of their customer data. But a unified customer view is a vital first step if you want to know who your customer is. Many companies have lots of customer data, but the data records are separate, so you need to collect basic information and be able to access it in one view.

Secondly, you need data on user behavior. Which services are they using or not using?

And finally, you need to understand the motivating factors behind customer choices. Why are they using certain services? You have to find out their preferences. This makes it easier to tailor new services and improve your overall service offering.

You have to make all this end-user data available in one database, have the applications to manage it and turn that data into useful information and insight. Operators can make good use of this information in many areas of their business; for example, marketing, customer care and provisioning systems. Our solutions give their employees relevant access to customer data and allow them to make use of it in their day-to-day work.

As operators roll out different services, customers will have different profiles. Does that make it even more important to keep track of who is using what?

When you ask operators why they want more user insights, they often reply that they need more sophisticated user profiles and make them available for different service areas. The more you know, the more freedom you have to generate revenue in different ways. Operators can, for example, respond to customer behavior by optimizing their service portfolios.

Do customer expectations and experiences in emerging markets differ from those in mature markets?

In developing markets, you often have two markets in one. In urban areas, customers tend to have the same expectations as in the US or Europe. But in rural areas, many people are happy just to have a connection. They also have less money to spend on telecommunications, and you have to adapt your market approach accordingly. Differences between income groups are highlighted in emerging markets. Low cost connectivity with the option of micropayments are needed in those markets.

What about subscriber data management solutions? Can operators take advantage of them even in rural areas of emerging markets?

Yes. Emerging markets use the same services, basically. Data management solutions allow you to see the value of a certain customer. This is important when margins are low, as they tend to be in rural areas of emerging markets. These tend to be low ARPU markets, where providers have to work at keeping up their margins. This makes it all the more important to tailor your offers exactly to the willingness-to-pay of the different customer segments of your customer base.

How do improvements to the end-user experience affect the network?

Simplifying the life of the customer does not directly relate to the network. But if we consider the service portfolio, the situation has changed considerably. Big operators used to build their content and applications on their service platforms. Today, operators have to handle lots of third-party applications and several partner collaborations.

In other words, you predict that we are going to see more strategic partnerships with third parties to enhance customer experience?

Yes, you have completely different requirements when it comes to service delivery than what you had earlier. Things were simpler with the old walled-garden model, when operators did everything on their own. But now they have to manage an open ecosystem of partners and suppliers, which is much more complicated. It makes your network much more complex. But it's not unmanageable. There are solutions for handling your ecosystem.

So, things are simpler for consumers but more challenging for businesses?

For sure.

Shifting gears a bit, will you give us one or two examples of how operators have worked to enrich customer experience?

The Web'n'Walk mobile broadband offering of our customer T-Mobile is one of the first that comes to mind. When you look at the figures, they have a 90 percent satisfaction rating, very high acquisition rates since about 40 percent of the broadband customers are new to T-Mobile. There are of course several reasons for this: the excellent quality of their network, strong partnerships with service providers from the internet, convenient access, single sign-on to services that can be customized - you just press one button and get connected with your favorite services.

Another example is the Finnish fixed and mobile operator Elisa, which was able to boost customer satisfaction by increasing the number of customer enquiries that could be solved during the first call to 98 percent. This was possible because the agents answering the phones had access to full customer profile. It's a great example of how you can improve customer care if you have the proper customer insight.

So everyone benefits.

Yes, everyone.

Volker Held

Volker works in the Strategic Marketing team at Nokia Siemens Networks, based in Munich. He is responsible for the "Enriched Customer Experience" theme. Prior to joining the marketing team, Volker spent four years in core networks sales.

Before that, he had several management and senior positions in portfolio management and business consulting at Siemens.

His experience in telecommunications comprises the mobile,  fixed and enterprise segments as well as the phone business.

Volker holds a masters degree in economics.