Enabling mass processing through automation of customer retention processes

From piloting to mass processing -automation and stable operations of a mobile operator’s customer retention processes

01

The challenge

  • provide for successfully piloted customer retention processes, which are operated with high manual efforts, to cope with high volumes and to be usable in telephony customer service and in customer self service
  • ensure auditing acceptability of sales partner settlement processes
  • customer retention volumes expected to increase by 10 times within one year and by 50 times within three years
02

The approach

  • establishing a joint project team of IT and customer service professionals with the shared target to halve the manual work time for each customer retention case in a first step, and to then reduce this time below 1 minute, while using existing IT functions and developing innovative customer retention process ideas
  • re-engineering the customer retention process taking into account different channels (e.g. telemarketing, inbound call centre, marketing response elements, sales partners)
  • establishing a performance measurement system for relevant steering KPIs and process objectives
  • agreeing procedures on how to cooperate between customer retention marketing, sales, finance and the involved customer service units
  • defining activities to support customer retention processes (logistics monitoring, marketing and sales activity planning) and allocation of respective accountabilities and responsibilities
03

The result

  • implementation of a multitude of the project team’s proposals:
    • achieved cutting the agent work time by half in the first step, and below one minute in the second year
    • introducing OCR-readable and hence fully automatically processable marketing response elements
  • cooperation between involved business functions and allocation of accountabilities across customer retention marketing, sales, finance and customer services established
  • extension into all inbound call centres
  • customer retention process management successfully established
  • auditing acceptability of sales partner settlement processes ensured
  • customer retention processes ready for self-service
  • significant reduction of customer churn achieved by successful implementation