OREANDA-NEWS. Deutsche Telekom’s “Voice of the Customer” program rolled out across 12 European markets wins International Business Excellence Award.
  • Deutsche Telekom recognized in "Customer Experience and Voice of the Customer" category
  • Awarded second time in a row for its "Voice of the Customer" program rolled out across 12 European markets

Customers’ expectations are changing. Customers are more informed, connected and demanding. Deutsche Telekom carefully listens to what customers say and this pays back in various ways. How does it listen? Via a cutting-edge measurement program entitled Next Generation ICCA – International Customer Contact Analysis. The program’s aim is straightforward: drive the best customer experience, one of Deutsche Telekom’s four strategic pillars. With 12 European subsidiaries operating in different market environments from the Netherlands to Greece and Poland to Montenegro, this is quite an endeavor. Hence, such a recognition is much appreciated.

"Customer insights, metrics and analytics are the foundation upon which we rely in order to be our customers’ best choice. We are very excited about this second award for our NG-ICCA program as it recognizes our continuous efforts towards best customer experience" comments Attila Keszeg, Senior Vice President for Commercial Excellence Europe at Deutsche Telekom.

Since the first SMS-based surveys conducted back in 2010, the program has come a long way with customers’ feedback having multiplied by 20. A big milestone was accomplished in 2013 when all customer touch-points were covered, no matter whether store, call-centre, web-shop, field-technicians etc. Ever since, some 5 million customer feedbacks come in each year and are directly delivered to the frontline. This magnitude of feedback is used to drive improvements and ensure that each and every single customer stays satisfied.

Simple and internationally acclaimed
The mechanism of the NG-ICCA is very simple: every time customers contact a local subsidiary through any customer touch point they may receive a text invitation to a survey. It is up to them to conduct the survey or not. Deutsche Telekom is the only multinational telecom provider in Europe that has set up such a thorough and holistic survey system across all its 12 national companies. In this way, valuable customer feedback is collected across all customer touch-points using one insight methodology and one, common language.

Based on these results, several pilot projects run across the European footprint, for example at T-Mobile Netherlands where loyal, satisfied customers act as ambassadors, getting small incentives in return. Similarly, local subsidiaries at Netherlands, Montenegro and Croatia develop a customer journey tracker for the whole customer lifecycle to map and drive personalized improvements whenever necessary.

Reflecting on the key issues that international businesses are facing, the International Business Excellence Awards recognize business excellence from all over the world in 31 categories across sectors and disciplines. Entries are scored based on pre-defined criteria and shortlisted companies present to a panel of judges formed by experts across industries. Winners for this year were selected from 94 finalist companies.