TeliaSonera Case Study

Introduction

TeliaSonera, a leading provider of telecommunication services sought to deliver world class customer experience, all the way from the Nordic countries to Nepal.

To achieve this, they needed to be even better at recognising and treating each customer on an individual basis – across all interactions.

TeliaSonera established an initiative to optimize real-time inbound and outbound communications, to be more relevant, to be more proactive in their customer interactions - throughout the entire customer lifecycle.

Camilla Cramner, MBA, Head of Global Retention Programs at TeliaSonera explains:

At TeliaSonera we have a great vision. We have a vision of becoming a world class service company, and customer experience is one of our top three focus areas.

Challenge

The strategy for us is to implement customer lifecycle management. A more structured way of treating the customer, from when the customer becomes a new customer, and throughout the whole lifecycle of developing, retaining, and possibly winning back the customer.

The second part of the strategy is to be able to do this in all the different direct channels. So, we need to work with both outbound marketing and inbound marketing in order to really implement customer lifecycle management.

However, TeliaSonera had some Challenges:

• The company’s call centers lacked the supporting technology to provide customer service representatives with the specific customer data necessary to best serve each client
• It lacked the ability to automatically generate product information based on the conversation between the customer and the call center agent
• Additionally, the company realized that it was missing an opportunity to deliver the greatest value to its customers by not having the ability to integrate all channels (call center, the web, the stores, the retailers, mobile applications, and monthly invoice) and understand which offers were appropriate for each individual at each of the interaction.

Solution

Pitney Bowes provided TeliaSonera with powerful new software for real-time outbound and inbound communications to infuse new intelligence so the needs of the individual customer are matched specifically to customized offers and recommendations

So the key idea is that when a customer calls into the call centre, the agent will see prompts or recommendations being flagged in the screen so that they can deliver a very relevant or proactive offer or service tips.

The same applies when the customer logs-into customer WEB, and is greeted with intelligent prompts during the web session.

The PB solution leverages business rules to arbitrate the “best-next-action” and re-scores customers in real-time based upon the progress and context of the current interaction as well as interaction history.

Finally, business rules will make sure to include relevant and tailored Transpromo messaging (services or sales related with a call to action) on the invoicing whenever this is printed days or weeks after – reflecting the conversation that took place days before. Thus, the invoice and the whole operational process around it now go from being perceived as a cost center to a true revenue generating profit center for the business.

The enabler of the vision and the project is to choose a campaign management system for inbound and outbound marketing. We wanted a vendor who could provide us with assisting putting together as many channels as possible, and therefore we chose Portrait from Pitney Bowes.

The Pitney Bowes solution has enabled TeliaSonera to:

• Present the right offer to the right customer at the right time, every time and real-time
• Gain insights into customer response behavior to build better marketing campaigns
• Connect disparate interactions across all touch point

Results

TeliaSonera is implementing the solution in five countries running two projects per country, one for inbound marketing and one for outbound marketing.

They build a local database in each country, they plug into the Portrait system for the inbound and the outbound, and they also build the connection into their inbound channels, such as the call centers.

The benefits are increased ARPU, reduced churn and increase loyalty. Basically, improved customer lifetime value.

The project also has a heavy impact on the way we work. I see it as going from pushing products to developing the customer. It is a little bit of a paradigm shift. Also, you can say we go from traditional mass communication, to mass individualisation; from a product focus, to a customer focus.

When the business is communicating in concert with its customers’ needs and wants, it is achieving true customer harmony. And ultimately, driving to its desired business result.

Pitney Bowes has been helping businesses like TeliaSonera create great relationships through the application of its intelligent Customer Communications management platform.