The digital transformation of customer service P ROJ E C T PA RT N E R S
The digital transformation of customer service WRITTEN BY D a l e B e n to n PRODUCED BY A n d y L l oyd
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Martijn Franssen, Director of Digital Transformation, discusses how KPN’s digital transformation looks to deliver the best omnichannel experience to customers
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s the largest telecommunications provider in the country, KPN is well and truly the network of the Netherlands. For more than
135 years, KPN has set out to provide secure, reliable and future-proof networks and services to ensure that everyone is connected anytime and anywhere. As with any technology company, the key to remaining successful has been one of evolution. Over the years, KPN has continuously evolved as a company, in order to continue to provide the services that its customers demand and the network that the Netherlands needs. Though the digital transformation is nothing new, it undeniably defines the conversation for many industries and definitely increases the pressure within KPN to continue - and even more to speed up - the adaptation process. “In order to fuel the transformation journey of KPN, we have to listen more carefully to what’s going on in the market. 4
KPN
Martijn Franssen, Director of Digital Transformation
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KPN and Telecats win Customer First Partnership Award For over 10 years KPN and Telecats have been working together to continuously innovate and improve customer service for joint customers and KPN Customer Service itself. Since last year we have changed the way we work together: from a customer-supplier relationship to a partner model in which time-to-market and innovation are paramount. We work together in one scrum team, working in sprints on innovation, development and improvement. 30 seconds AHT per call;
KPN’S CUSTOMER SERVICE de-
correctly using speech recogni-
partment is the point of contact
tion, resulting in far fewer calls
for both private and business
being transferred. This has a
customers. Millions of KPN’s
positive effect on both customer
customer contacts take place
and employee satisfaction. With
Voice Response System (VRS)
by phone and increasingly via
the help of speech routing, we
has increased to 15%;
digital channels such as live chat
have set in motion a movement
and social media. This makes
within KPN Customer Service
in significant savings over the
customer service an important
where we no longer route a
past year; and
source for KPN when it comes
customer contact directly to
to improving service.
an available customer expert
the NPS was also met, increas-
only, but directly direct it to
ing by 17 points over the same
improve KPN’s service to the
the best solution. This can be
period.
customer, we are constantly
a customer expert, but also a
looking for smart ways to sur-
voice driven self-service tool,
Martijn Franssen (KPN)
prise the customer. KPN has a
a reference to a specific online
“Telecats’s innovative solutions
clear technological vision. KPN
page, or a live chat if the call
are technically in line with the
is on its way to ‘conversational
center is busy.
future architecture needed to
In order to continuously
service’ in which, in addition to
By routing calls using speech
• The number of redirected calls has been reduced by 20%; • Self-service capacity in the
• The new collaboration resulted
• The objective of not affecting
implement KPN’s digital strat-
automating the dialogue, it also
recognition, real-time informa-
egy. There is a real “cultural
aims to apply as much intelli-
tion is also available on possible
fit”. Telecats radiates a flexible,
gence and resolving power as
trends and the most frequently
modern approach in everything.
possible. An important step was
asked questions. In addition to
The obtained results are proof
the very successful implemen-
the standard daily, weekly and
of this unique collaboration.
tation of speech routing with
monthly reports, voice recogni-
With a clear voice for Customer
partner Telecats.
tion provides insight into cus-
Service in this collaboration, the
tomer service per subject. This
customer has become the basis
tomers to state a question in
collaboration in the past year
of innovation in the field of cus-
their own words. 90% of all
has proved to be successful because:
tomer contact. KPN and Tele-
questions can be classified
• Speech routing with CTI saves
cats place the Customer First!”
Speech routing allows cus-
www.telecats.com
We live in the information age. Our customers have become streetwise; they
of customer service. “Having worked with KPN previously,
possess more knowledge around a busi-
so much had changed in the company
ness than ever before, and, more impor-
by the time I returned, particularly when
tantly, they are more demanding as they
it came to internal culture,” explains
can move to competitors at the click of a
Franssen. “The company has become
button. As such, we have to think about
smaller, more lean and mean. Working
how we can retain them. This places
in silos is history, it has become much
greater emphasis and responsibility on
more open and collaborative. But also, the
customer service. Because who else
years in between have helped me find my
than its care representatives can truly
own energy which appears to come from
represent the voice of the customer?”
putting down a vision and start changing
says Martijn Franssen, who is leading
an organisation in order to realise it.”
the change within Customer Service as Director of Digital Transformation. With almost 20 years’ experience
So the time was right to return to this great company, which is undergoing a significant change once again as it looks
working with KPN initially as a business
to create a seamless experience for its
controller and then cutting his teeth in
customers. Franssen recognised this
a number of international roles within
need and when he was brought in to lead
the media and the insurance industry,
this transformation, the end goal was
Franssen was given the opportunity by
clear. “The overall goal is to be where our
KPN to deliver the digital transformation
customers are in such a way that they will
“In order to fuel the transformation journey of KPN, we have to listen more carefully to what’s going on in the market” — MARTIJN FRANSSEN Director of Digital Transformation
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have easy, seamless journeys across
serious investments were required
all our channels driven by a digitalisa-
whilst not everyone was convinced that
tion of our way of working,” he says.
live chat was the way to go. There is
“Make life easier and more personalised
always the fear that opening an extra
for the customer by becoming the best
channel will result in additional traffic.
service provider in the Netherlands. This
“However, I don’t believe a customer
helps retain your customers and drives
will contact KPN via any channel just for
your company value.” How he looked to
chitchat,” he says.
achieve this was by a digital transformation of Customer Service, which was to take place in three phases. The first phase was focused on boosting live chat. As KPN encouraged customers to start their journeys on the website, it was also about acknowledging the fact that not all visitors could easily navigate it and simply needed support in order to prevent them from losing trust and from picking up their phone in case of a next issue. “Our belief was that we would serve the people starting their journey online, but we could also provide immediate answers to customers that needed us throughout their journeys. This then would also allow us to improve the quality of the online journey, because we could ask the customer immediately why they needed our help and what was missing on the website.” In order to establish a substantial population of live chat engagements, 8
KPN
“What I became aware of during the
last few years is that the transforma-
seen as ‘unfriendly’ customer service
tion speed has a lot to do with being
but there was method in it. “We noticed
creative. It is about identifying oppor-
that there were a lot of high costs
tunities and convincing stakeholders
attached to this asynchronous channel,”
on the basis of little bits of evidence in
he says. “More importantly, customer
order to continue.”
satisfaction was quite low. So, there was
In order to increase live chat volumes,
a clear incentive to close that channel
KPN shut down its email channel.
and reinvest the resources into the live
Franssen admits this could arguably be
chat population.”
Conversational experts Customer Service, Wieger den Boer and Aviva Dassen
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Conversational development team Technium
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KPN
With steadily growing live chat volumes, KPN immediately began to see major improvements in its Net Promoter Score (NPS) as detractors were exchanged for promoters. This was even more the case once customers were proactively offered a live chat. To further grow its live chat population, attention turned to its web care team. Taking a similar approach, KPN looked at introducing live functionality and introduced social chat, which acted as a bridge from the social media channels to the live chat. “Once the customer had a transactional question, such as receive a copy of their invoice, we would offer them a link to live chat and start changing the channel,” says Franssen. “Once we did that, again we started to see the NPS improve and the costs go down.” Live chat reached its peak of around 30.000 engagements a week once voice-to-chat was introduced within the Voice Response System (VRS) in case waiting time became too high. In hindsight, it became the trigger to start blending voice and non-voice skills to optimise variety for and productivity of our agents. Franssen is also keen to highlight that it has never been about realising a certain volume of live chats, the goal was to make sure KPN’s customers could rely on the company and could be on channels which they are used to. “In the meantime, the volume has reduced in cases where voice turned out to be more effective within a specific customer journey and vice versa,” explains Franssen. “On top of that I expect that live chat will soon be cannibalised by messaging. It will be either self service, voice or messaging.” w w w.k pn .com
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A transformation of this scale asks
Phase two of the digital transformation
a lot of the existing workforce to rethink
saw Franssen focus more on the digital-
the way they work and take on new
isation of other customer touchpoints
responsibilities. Some, naturally, may be
starting with voice, the biggest offline
fearful or express hesitance in adopting
volume. KPN implemented speech recog-
this new way of working. This is where
nition technology to track down the intent
a strong sense of change management
of the customer and to remove voice
and support is key. Franssen points to a
response system menus. “The problem
number of ways in which he and his team was that too many people were involved communicate the value of the transfor-
and that it was only about routing to an
mation to the individual, as well as the
available agent,” says Franssen. “At my
organisation, as a means of fuelling a
request, we minimised the number of
belief in the journey. “It’s about showing
stakeholders and organised a small agile
them the use cases and showing them
organisation made up of internal staff and
what we are going through with this
our supplier Telecats to ensure that the
transformation. By showing evidence
company could increase the velocity in
you start fuelling the belief that some-
how they developed the speech domain.
thing’s happening and they can contribute,” he says.
“They supported us in optimising the way we are routing our calls. By look-
“We are doing this with our own people, ing at the data and monitoring essenbut also with our external partners such
tial KPIs (like repeat callers, handling
as Continuum and Webhelp. So, we visit
time, transfer rates, sales conversion),
the call centres at different locations and
we try to improve our performance on
look at what we are doing and where,
a daily basis.” This approach, Franssen
as customer service, we are heading.
feels, has been incredibly successful, as
It’s also an opportunity to show why we
it reflects the importance of partners
need them because if we really believe
acting as real partners and not simply as
that that voice of the customer should
service delivery.
drive our change, then our people are the
The smaller and dedicated team made
key representatives in engaging with the
it easier to have fruitful discussions
customer and providing us with the right
about the direction KPN was heading in.
signals for change.”
Not only to ensure that routing quality
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KPN
Walk-In Customer Service, S amuel van Gelder and Iris Kuit
would be higher but also to digitalise
Not only has the deflection rate
the voice response system. The motto
increased, it has also increased visibil-
was changed from routing to an availa-
ity on its customers due to boosting
ble agent into getting the best (digital)
customer recognition. This has enabled
solution. In many cases this would still
data driven routing decisions to ensure
be one of KPN’s agents, but increas-
that KPN will reduce customer effort
ingly it’s becoming directed to self care
while also optimising KPN’s results. “For
tooling as well. “This has taken a flight
example, if a customer calls us and we
by introducing our visual IVR (interac-
do see that he or she is suffering from
tive voice response) which turned call-
an outage, we will proactively inform the
ers into website visitors,” says Franssen.
customer and offer the opportunity to
“If a question concerns a topic which is
keep the customer informed,” he says.
related to a self care solution, we offer our
“Same applies for customers with billing
customers to accept an sms including
issues who need extra support to solve
a short URL to provide them with our
their difficulties; data tells us to transfer
online self care functionalities.”
them to a desk where we have more time w w w.th e in te r fa ce . n e t
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to give the right support.” Customer data will soon become the
real-time data insights in order to reduce customer effort on the one hand, but also
main driver for business decisions; the
to spend our money wisely so we can
actual question of the customer will still
continue to offer premium services. In
be considered as crucial input, but will be
order to realise this, we need to enrich our
part of broader consideration. Franssen
customer data and increase our focus on
believes this will be a tough balanc-
the usage of machine learning to help us
ing act, but a balancing act all the same.
identify what is good for which customer
“KPN offers everyone the highest stand-
on a specific moment.”
ards possible, but at the same time the
As for data, there is an important role
market is changing and has changed
for customer service as well. “We use
radically,” he says. “There’s constant
our customer engagement to under-
pressure on margins and on costs, so
stand who the customer is and what
we have to become more intelligent. We
they really need through which we can
have to become hyper personalised using
confirm - or not - whether provided
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KPN
“What I became aware of during the last few years is that the transformation speed has a lot to do with being creative. It is about identifying opportunities and convincing stakeholders on the basis of little proof points in order to continue” — MARTIJN FRANSSEN Director of Digital Transformation
next best actions are sufficiently accu-
of real-time contextual data. Though it
rate. This is supervised learning with the
is still about recognising the customer
help of our customer agents. The effect
and their intent, it will be more interac-
is that customer service, perhaps more
tive than ever before. “We are creating
than ever before, is quickly moving the
the ability to track down the ques-
heart of the organisation.”
tion behind the question just like we
With the successful completion of
have done within Customer Service
phase one shift to online - and major
over the last decades. Not only on
inroads being made with phase two, it
the basis of a dialogue, but more and
became time to move on to the third
more by using customer journey data,”
phase, which is about the shift towards
explains Franssen.
automating the conversation with the
“In order to speed things up we again
customer. A shift driven by the rise of
started in our own domain within the live
natural language processing. machine
chat channel. It made sense because, in
learning and the increasingly availability
customer service, we feel the pressure to w w w.k pn .com
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“ The effect is that customer service, perhaps more than ever before, is fast moving towards the heart of the organisation” — MARTIJN FRANSSEN Director of Digital Transformation
make sure we are effective and efficient.
KPN’s customer service representatives
By introducing a chatbot and automating
in position so they could start building
conversations, we are showing a good
dialogues. “At the same time, the plat-
business case for why we are doing it.” In
form features helps our conversation
less than a year and a half, almost all chat
specialist to optimise the conversation in
sessions start in the bot. This already
order to minimise customer frustration
already accomplishes a double-digit
as we acknowledge that our customer
deflection by offering self care, whilst
also needs to get used to a chatbot,”
customer satisfaction remains high.
explains Franssen.
One of the reasons that this approach
The collaboration with Nuance is
has been successful is a result of KPN’s
based on a true partnership as well,
partnership with Nuance. Nuance’s plat-
where both parties closely work
form Nina made it possible to quickly put
together to increase the maturity of the
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KPN
Myron Laagland, Product Owner Conversational Customer Service
chatbot. “Over the coming months, this
we can truly improve our customer
journey will evolve further, our chatbot
service as we can offer an unambiguous
will become a digital assistant becom-
though personalised customer journey
ing the impersonation of this conver-
optimising the deployment of self-care
sational phase. An assistant which will
tooling in combination with our ever-
be equipped with the same tools and
needed and appreciated emphatic and
insights as our customer representa-
intelligent customer service experts.”
tives, and which will be connected to a number of touchpoints across KPN like our messaging channels, TV and voice,” “If we manage to create the basis for a true digital assistant having its presence across all the touchpoints, I am confident w w w.k pn .com
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