FORMULATING A

STRATEGY FOR
CUSTOMER
EXPERIENCE

ith customers now expecting a seamless, coherent and customer-centric experience,

operators must invest more in their customer experience management in order to retain
and expand their customer base. Formulating a workable strategy for this is of course
critical, but for many particularly those in the Nordic and Baltic regions laying the right
foundations is proving a sticking point.
The Telenor Network strategy is to be a customer-driven network, explains Michael Jul
Jensen, senior manager of Network Customer Experience at Telenor Danmark. The company has
had an overall CEM strategy for over three years and for the last two, has been operating an
approach specifically for network.
One thing is to have green technical KPIs, but we need to consider whether our customers
agree with us at the other end. Our setup tells us what our customers experience within our
network, and whether or not they are satisfied with our performance. If theyre not...well, we need
to look into how to resolve that, to make them happy and to be promotors of the network.
Achieving that will be a big factor in the overall perception of Telenor DK. Under our strategy, we
react to issues sooner, we know more about our customers, and we can inspire directions into
strategy, new builds and marketing.
While some are optimistic their ideas should work, other companies are struggling to
understand whether these lessons are transferable or if each organisation is so diverse that there is
no way to carbon-copy a CEM rulebook and make it work in all cases.
CX NETWORK DECEMBER 2015

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Simon Lange, customer experience architect
at TDC, is candid in his concerns that the
initial strategy employed at his organisation
may not meet their ultimate albeit lofty
vision: to provide the best customer service in
the Nordic region.
I think we have a good idea of where we
are and what we want to be, and then we have
the strategy that should take us there, but the
lag has been in the implementation of it, he
says. By that you could say weve perhaps
had the wrong strategy. It looks good pretty
good on paper, its pretty clear, its
operational, we know how to measure it,
weve identified what we need to do as an
organisation but the result is still not there
just yet.
One of the hurdles for TDC is that the
company has to manage multiple brands,
covering different audiences and objectives,
from its digital television service to mobile
phone service. This means that while they
strive to fulfil a variety of customer
requirements and stay on top of the
innovations in technology, they do not
necessarily have the manpower or IT
resources to implement their ideas quickly
enough.

A customercentric way of
working is a
change in
mind-set
and
setup
Michael Jul Jensen

I think everybody is struggling with this,

says Lange. Its a very common situation to
know what you want but struggle to actually
get it done. We have dedicated customer
excellence teams trying to facilitate these
changes in culture and processes and systems
and but suddenly you need something new
like a self-service app or a new way to control
the customer-facing technicians. It comes
down to resources.
Again, the playing field changes from one
case to another. Jensen sees culture as the
biggest challenge at Telenor.
For a technical division like network, he
says, a customer-centric way of working is a
change in mind-set and setup. But budget
hasnt been an issue for us. We have
implemented most of our solutions ourselves,
using resources within the division. If we
hadnt been self-supplying our own OSS
resources and quality management engineers,
we would certainly have needed technology
solutions to set up the system on this scale,
and to help visualise the findings.
In an effort to help Nordic telecoms
companies resolve some of these problems,
the CEM Telecoms Nordics conference
(11 - 13 April, 2016; Stockholm) will provide a
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I would like to
talk to a lot of
people about
how to handle
customer
emotions

and its very difficult to handle in the right

way. So I would like to talk to a lot of people
about how to handle customer emotions.
For more information on how to reserve your
place, visit www.cemtelecomsnordics.com.
Alternatively, email enquire@defenceiq.com
or call +44 (0) 20 7368 9737.

Simon Lange

two-day exploration of industry success

stories, offering dedicated opportunities to
learn best practices and to network with the
experts. Both Jensen and Lange will be
presenting their positions at the forum, and
will be seeking answers to the problems still
plaguing their specific strategies.
Im looking forward to dialogues with
colleagues from other companies, says
Jensen, particularly to hear their take on the
way we work with our own setup. Also
important will be to come away from this
event with new ideas to fuel us for the years
to come.
Lange agrees. I think its always
interesting to talk to other people about this
and, as yet, there has been no conclusion as to
the best way to do things. Almost everybody
has just started on this journey and everybody
is a little down because its a very difficult goal
to get results quickly.
Im particularly right now in self-service.
Were talking a lot about it because we know
that 70 percent of all decisions in the buying
experience are made out of emotional
response. Its a very difficult thing to measure
CX NETWORK DECEMBER 2015

WHO WILL YOU MEET?

Network with and learn from leading
telecoms operators from the Nordics
and Baltics, including VPs, Directors,
Heads and Senior Managers of:

Customer Experience
Customer Service
CRM
Customer Care
Loyalty
Social Media
Online
Digital
Call Centre Management
Customer Retention
Marketing

www.CEMTELECOMSNORDICS.com