Europe’s leading service provider increases customer satisfaction cost efficiently

After outsourcing its call center functions, one of Europe’s leading CSPs needed to ensure that quality of its customer service didn’t decline, while at the same time keep the OPEX of technical support functions that supported the call center in check. Multiplication of services, complexity of operation models, high churn of call center agents had escalated the number of customer complaints to operations. That’s when the CSP turned to Nokia Siemens Networks. Based on an existing long-term partnership, Nokia Siemens Networks proposed a solution that not only halved the number of escalated calls but brought about significant reductions in customer handling time and commensurate OPEX savings.

 

Maximizing efficiency in customer care

The European CSP’s operations received thousands of calls each month that were escalated from the call center to the customer care back office, even for basic and routine tasks like checking a customer profile. The situation became increasingly unmanageable and expensive.

To control costs and keep customers satisfied, it was decided to fully automate the technical complaint process for the services offered so far, including both residential and business call centers and retail outlets.

A reliable solution was needed to identify the specific problem related to each customer complaint, and also the answer for it, in plain and easy to understand language – and in a few seconds.

It was decided to start with the SMS service to test the concept since most customer complaints were related to SMS and also because it was a relatively simple service.

Nokia Siemens Networks Customer Care solution

Nokia Siemens Networks project team adopted a flexible approach, meeting the CSP’s requirements precisely. In the first phase, the solution automated the workflow related to SMS complaints and customer care-related departments: call center, operations, monitoring, billing, and shops, with the necessary flexibility to expand it to additional services in the future.

The strength of the solution is an easy-to-configure and highly extensible workflow engine – Nokia Siemens Networks NetAct Service Quality Manager – that enables easy configuration without any coding. Using this, the operator’s staff can extend the scenario logic, as new account configuration failure modes become apparent.

Whenever a subscriber calls the customer care center with a technical issue pertaining to SMS or Voice Mail Service (VMS), this workflow engine interfaces with the existing systems, collecting relevant data about the subscriber’s recent calling activity, the account configuration, and the mobile network’s status (e.g. Nokia Siemens Networks products such as NetAct Traffica, but also other vendors’ tools) to validate the subscriber’s profile, diagnose the problems the subscriber is having, and to fix the problem automatically or to give detailed instructions to the customer care agent about how to solve the problem.

The solution can detect if:
   • SMS quality of service is degraded
   • Customer’s mobile has a problem (e.g. SMS Center address, SMS Bearer, memory full)
   • Customer is suspended
   • Service is not provisioned correctly (e.g. T22: SMS Originating, T21: SMS Terminating)
   • Service is barred (e.g. T21 or T22 customer barring, operator barring, any types: all outgoing, all incoming, international, roaming)
   • Prepaid credit is too low
   • There is a problem with dialed numbers / customer not reachable, etc.
   • Prepaid IN platform inconsistencies, e.g. problem with account migration

 

Stable and mature end-to-end solution

Nokia Siemens Networks took care of the system integration towards other systems. In particular, the solution has interfaces with Traffica, HLR, Provisioning & Billing systems, Voice Mailbox systems, and IN Pre-paid system. Additionally, the solution accesses the service model implemented in SQM providing the current network-wide service quality of the monitored services. Seamless integration into the existing customer relationship management system enables call center agents to use the new features without leaving their well-known tool landscape. Further, the solution supports the country’s multi-lingual culture, communicating concurrently in four preconfigured languages.

The first phase for the SMS service was very successful. Subsequently, Nokia Siemens Networks was awarded an extension project for the second phase, enhancing the workflow engine capabilities, integrating with additional systems and accepting user input during the diagnosis, allowing the solution to not only diagnose, but also correct faulty settings. Using this, a diagnostic scenario for voice mail box was developed. This is much more sophisticated than the SMS check, and can detect more than 80 different fault situations including:
   • Account suspension
   • Account features
   • Consistency of subscriber data between various systems
   • Call diverts configuration
   • MSISDN virtual address

 

A string of tangible benefits

From 56 percent complaint escalation to less than 20 percent in two months
From the initial stage where 56 percent of technical customer complaints were escalated to back office (including customer care technical support, national monitoring center and operations technical support), two months after the launch less than 20 percent of calls were escalated.

In line with reducing the number of calls, while prior to November 1, the national monitoring center received around 60 calls per week related to SMS, post launch, they received 1 or 2 calls per week.

SMS complaints escalated to customer care technical support decreased by 30 percent, complaints escalated to IT operations decreased by 60 percent, and the average time to handle a ticket by customer care technical support decreased by 50 percent.

First call fix ratio increased considerably
The CSP’s call center agents can now fix the problem during the first call for 50 percent of the complaints: on an average in 50 percent of the cases the root cause of the problem is assessed within 20 seconds. By contrast, this would take several minutes for a competent agent to do the same tasks manually.

1.5 Full Time Employees OPEX savings
The estimated OPEX saving related to the reduction of escalations and ticket handling time by technical support is 1.5 full-time employees – and this doesn’t include the decrease in call handling time at the front (customer care agent), nor the first call fix ratio increase.

No additional training required
Immediately after the solution’s deployment, call center agents could start using it without any prior training since the user interface was very easy to use.

“It has reduced a lot of the dependency placed on senior customer service representatives,” said the CSP customer care head. He also sees this solution allowing him to hire less technical agents, reducing costs due to the handling time and first call resolution, and increasing customer satisfaction.

Excellent customer feedback
The CSP has received very positive feedback from end users. “This is the future of customer service tools,” added the customer care head. “If developed further, it will become a product that call centers around the world will fight for. In the current climate, companies need to save on customer service/ support costs without losing on customer satisfaction, and this solution addresses this well.” One month after it was launched with its SMS Workflow only, more than 380 customer care agents used it and they ran around 2000 SMS Checks per week. In 48 percent of the cases, the solution found the problem root cause.

Looking Ahead

Future plans include expansion to other services, device management integration, proactive customer care, and self-administration. In the next phase, the solution will be expanded to other services, such as data sessions and MMS, and will include integration with Nokia Siemens Networks device management solution for settings auto-correction, as well as integration with Trouble Ticketing for easy and cost-effective escalation to support groups.

In addition to this, the solution is planned to be integrated in the Web SelfCare platform, so that customers can find the solutions to their problems, off-loading the call center from simple and routine issues, and further reducing subscriber support costs, while maintaining a consistent level of service.

The CSP also intends to offer an interface for proactive customer care, whereby the solution could advise customers to correct their phone settings automatically before they even encounter a problem. The solution could also be applied to fixed broadband access services which are currently offered through a partner.