Intense price competitions and declining EBITDA margins have sieged the telecom industry. Added to this, telecom service providers are ached by poor Net Promoter Scores in customer experience and service when pitted against the global tech giants. Industry leaders recognise the urgency in investing and transforming customer experiences for the better if they intend to improve profitability, reduce costs and develop new innovative services.

This report studied 80 leading service providers across the Asia Pacific and comprehensively assessed their holistic CX strategies. The outcome is a top 10 list of the best service providers across the Asia Pacific to ace CX. We hope that these leading service providers and their innovative approaches will offer new benchmarks for CX in the Asia Pacific.

Benchmarking CX strategies across the 4 pillars

Telco leaders understand value creation lies in cultivating hyper-personalised and digitalised experiences. As a result, the industry is shifting focus from delivering standard products to orchestrating great customer experiences. We benchmarked APAC telecom service providers across four dimensions and marked what is key to producing an excellent customer experience:

• Creating a digital experience,
• Enhancing the service experience,
• Improving the employee experience,
• and Building a positive brand experience

Methodology

Step 1: We shortlisted 80 network service operators across the Asia-Pacific region.

Step 2: Then, we developed informed perspectives on CX through company reports, published anecdotes, contemporary CX literature and press releases

Step 3: Finally, we shortlisted the top 10 telcos by a thorough screening based on the four pillars of the twimbit CX framework

Top 10 APAC Telco leaders on CX

We thoroughly examined the telcos that have achieved and emphasised their efforts on the four parameters defined under twimbit’s CX framework. As a result, these telcos have made waves in the way they create and define value for their customers. The list of operators discussed below reflects the result of comprehensive benchmarking across the four pillars.

4 key lessons from the CX champions

1. Digital experience: Using technology to go from zero to one

We’re up to about 150 bots, but it’s actually more about the processes: how many processes can you run with a bot?… Think of it like how many tasks or jobs a person can do in one day. If you can have that and you can expand that across a bot that runs 24×7, how many tasks can you get the bot to do?”

Ruth Santangelo,
Associate director of digital,
service and automation, Optus

Today’s customers are digitally savvy and more open to adapting to technology. The challenge for telcos lies in high service expectations set by digital natives such as Netflix, Spotify, and Amazon, who do not even compete directly with telcos.

Digital initiatives are crucial to operators for extracting insights about consumers. Adopting the right CX technologies paves the roadmap towards building great customer engagement platforms and optimising customer interactions.

Top priorities include providing a personalised experience based on data-driven analytics and seamless interaction across multiple telco channels.

1.1 KDDI’s au life design

Its design is an example of integrating big tech to deliver a personalised digital experience to customers.

“au is strengthening its point of contact with customers by using big data to find entry points into users’ lifestyle needs.

‘au PAY’ is being positioned as a super-app that will become the launchpad for customers’ daily life activities by integrating services such as hailing taxis and making restaurant reservations.

1.2 SoftBank leveraging public and private data to design innovative solutions

Softbank uses public and private data to launch tech-based solutions across industries, understand societal problems and design solutions around them.

For example, Monet addresses key issues like traffic jams, accidents among older adults, the decrease in public transportation users, driver shortage and availability of public transportation in remote areas. Monet also provides on-demand mobility services and helps users search, pay, and book reservations for all types of public transport.

SoftBank’s ‘Beyond Carrier’ strategy utilises new technology and facilitates data analytics services to solve problems that directly impact the lives of end-users.

#2. Service Experience: The shift from selling standard products to orchestrating the great customer experience

In 2020, monthly customer care volumes reduced by 28%. We also saw an 18% increase in online chat interactions, and our chatbot Ivy is now resolving more than half of these chat interactions – which further improves resolution times.

Jolie Hodson, Spark, CEO

A better service experience gives a telco the edge over its competitors. For this, the experience goes beyond the network and the product. A consumer-centric approach should not bypass the importance of in-store experience, contact centres, and customer engagement.

An emotional touch from the customer service agent or front-end executive is equally essential. In addition, the whole servicing process is enhanced with agents equipped with digital tools to assist consumers on a wide range of topics.

According to a survey conducted by Deloitte:

• 82% prefer remote support and troubleshooting over call centres
• 77% prefer self-install/repair services post-COVID-19

2.1 SK Telecom is innovating into an ‘AI & Digital Infrastructure Service’ company

SK Telecom uses big data to customise service experiences in order to predict the purpose of customer requests.

• AI consultation – VoiceBot service for 24-hour consultation
• Automatic response system to provide a visual aid for seniors

Every month, the CEO and key employees meet to innovate customer value. Additionally, middle-aged employees (20s and 30s) act like customers to test products and services and identify possible inconveniences.

2.2 NTT Docomo offers an in-store experience like no other through its ‘d garden’

It is an example of a shift from customer acquisition to enhanced service experience. The store welcomes any service provider subscriber.

The store personalises the shopping experience by creating a café-like or lounge environment. The in-store music and variety of staff functionalities also enhance the overall service experience.

#3. Creating the winning employee experience

In a world where money is no longer the primary motivating factor for employees, focusing on the employee experience is the most promising competitive advantage that organisations can create.

Jacob Morgan,
Futurist and Author of The Employee Experience Advantage

A good customer experience always starts with the employee, the driving force behind customer satisfaction. EX in the telecom sector is at an inflection point, as telcos look to support an increasingly remote workforce while maintaining culture, communication, and productivity.

3.1 SK Telecom initiated employee happiness as a business strategy.

SK Telecom launched the Happiness Management initiative in 2020. Diagnosing the happiness levels of its employees in a bottom-up approach, SK Telecom uses the results gained to develop and improve its initiative to achieve its cause, employee happiness.

Based on employee feedback from about 100 rounds of “Happiness Talk”, the company came up with happiness initiatives, such as:

• Adopting a unique non-rating-based performance evaluation method to avoid internal competition amongst employees.
• Launched Haenggarae, an everyday social problem-solving platform for employees to increase their understanding of Social Value
• Each time an employee makes a social contribution, they get a reward via a blockchain-based SV Rewards system.

SK Telecom employs smart digital tools to motivate employees and provide them with a sense of belonging. Some feedback, communication, and engagement initiatives include:

• 5G Smart Office is accessible from anywhere and promotes sharing and collaboration between employees by allowing joint document drafting and sharing, including video conferencing.
• I’M HERE, a tool for allowing communication among the CEO and employees.

3.2 Spark believes in diversity as the backbone of growth.

Spark women represent 50% of the board and leadership positions.

Spark also became the first telecom company in New Zealand to achieve the Rainbow Tick certification in 2017. This certificate is awarded to companies that embrace the diversity of sexual and gender identities.

Under its Blue Heart pledge, Spark encourages employees to make a personal commitment to supporting diversity and inclusion by being inclusive in everything they do. Some other initiatives include:

• Celebration of cultural events, through employee-led events and communications
• EmpowerED, a platform to support women in leadership
• Spark Pride, embracing the diversity of our LGBTQI+ community

#4. Brand experience impact customers’ life beyond being a telco

Our goal is to be ‘the most needed company in Japan.’ With our comprehensive digital platform, we want to raise awareness of SoftBank Corp.’s role as an essential provider of social infrastructure.

Junichi Miyakawa, SoftBank,
President & CEO

An operator needs to address the basic ‘hygiene’ factors and then go beyond that, to impact the life of the consumers. The former is related to the conduct of business, and the latter revolves around the societal impact that a telco creates.

In light of the norms, a telco cannot compromise on aspects like transparency, the status of services, fairness during the process, and so forth. Therefore, additional value is created for the brand when a telco participates in social welfare activities.

The same survey from Deloitte also reveals

• 80% preferred a brand that engaged with them during the crisis
• 70% would switch brands based on promotional offers and free services

4.1 Optus launched ‘Donate Your Data’ program to help the underprivileged

This program enables customers to donate unused data to young people, their families and other Australians in need. 25,000 plus youngsters are a part of this program. Consumers have donated 28,371,456 GB of data, and Optus has made donations of 3,100,000 GB of data.

4.2 Airtel is confident that ‘Zero Questions’ is a utopian idea.

Airtel launched the ‘Open to Questions’ campaign to get closer to ‘Zero Questions’ from customers. Airtel invited questions in this campaign from each segment and used these as insights to improve product functionalities and add new features. The objective was simple; Airtel wanted to address every single query.

Download the 95 slides full report here for the individual case studies on the top 10 telcos in Asia Pacific to ace CX.

Read here: Innovation opportunities in Telecoms: 2020-2030