PYÜR

PŸUR Shop Design

Customer Voice and the Matter of Choice

PŸUR successfully navigates life’s three constants: change, choice, and principles.

The Covid-19 pandemic shifted ground in the telecommunications industry as lockdowns and restrictions led to customers placing more value on stable, high-speed connectivity in their homes for social, work, and entertainment purposes. With the world seeming to go from one crisis to another with the Russia-Ukraine war, reliability and security are two qualities craved by many. For internet service providers, this offers the ideal opportunity to step up and meet customer needs by ensuring pre-crisis levels of service.

One German company that has demonstrated a comprehensive understanding of the customer need is Tele Columbus with its brand PŸUR. PŸUR offers high-speed internet up to 1.000 Mbit/s, including telephony and more than 200 TV channels, via a digital entertainment platform that combines linear TV with video-on-demand entertainment. The telecommunications organization has rolled out a fibre network and infrastructure in cities such as Berlin and Munich and has won many awards ranging from customer experience certifications to top digital service accolades.

PŸUR provides connectivity and entertainment to businesses and consumers, and serves roughly 10% of German households. It is currently working to become the fastest-growing internet service provider in the German market, based on fibre infrastructure. Interestingly, turning back the clock a few years to 2018, this target would not have been conceivable.

PŸUR

Radical results require radical change

In 2018, Roland Schleicher joined PŸUR as Chief Operations Officer during a challenging period for the company. This trying time came as a result of the integration of several competitors and the launch of their go-to-market brand, PŸUR. Roland’s objective was to stop the bleeding of the customer base, returning the company to positive customer growth. By placing a heavy focus on the customer, Roland steered a swift turnaround that led to improvements in customer experience and satisfaction, thereby reducing annual customer loss by 40%, leading the company back into the green.

Roland shared the three tenets that assisted him in implementing PŸUR’s turnaround strategy: “Firstly, we radically focused on the voice of the customer. I read customer feedback. I visit contact centers and listen in to customer calls. In some cases, I speak to customers individually. From there, we worked backward into the organization, looking at how we incentivized our managers and leaders. We looked at what types of projects to invest in, and which ones to choose to tackle the underlying root causes of customer problems.

“Secondly, I believe in technology and technology-driven innovation as a means for radical change. When we look at a product or service, we start from scratch. We redesign it under the principle of mobile and digital-first, then we work backward to the business processes and the underlying technology. This is something one can only do when using technology.

“The third one is around my team and people leadership. Achieving those results has been extremely intensive for my team. I challenge them quite often but it’s important to me they understand why I do that. I give them the correct context around it. Also, we focused on improving from an employee satisfaction perspective, which we also measure regularly and have improved upon.”

Gevekom

At gevekom, we are customer service and sales professionals with over 1,600 employees in six countries.

We have been managing the commercial and technical customer service for PŸUR in first & last level support for four years now. Our tasks include, for example, creating contracts for new customers, clarifying invoices, termination, porting, fault clearance, setup and hardware replacement. We are trained in full service and sales for PŸUR.

One of our strengths is a very high level of customer satisfaction, which makes us the NPS champion for PŸUR. Our strong NPS is mainly achieved through the very high satisfaction of our employees. We believe that happy employees provide better customer service to our partners. At gevekom, our employees benefit from exceptional lifestyle office spaces that do not remind you of work, free breakfast, free working hours, company kindergarten and much more. As the most family-friendly company, we are one of the most popular employers in the industry. Our company NPS of 86 % at kununu.com is exceptional.

A special asset of our company is our certified quality management. For us, high quality means a passion for customer service. We involve our employees on a daily basis in improving the qualitative parameters.

We appreciate the very good cooperation with PŸUR. Roland Schleicher’s team and he himself are extremely cooperative and motivate us to achieve top performance at all times. That’s why we make PŸUR’s customer service even better every day.

www.gevekom.de

Telecommunications Feature

Tele Columbus Partners with CGI to help achieve its strategic goals

Extensive digitalization and automation are vital for Tele Columbus to consistently provide first-rate customer service. Since 2015, Tele Columbus has relied on CGI to help achieve this goal through the optimization of its IT operations and improved user experiences.

CGI initially assumed responsibility for the company’s IT help desk in 2015, introducing agile processes and transforming the user experience. Tele Columbus also turned to CGI for regulatory compliance and customer relationship management support.

As their partnership grew, CGI began providing Tele Columbus with application services, including migrating native apps to web apps, and developing new ones, such as the MEIN PYUR customer service app. In April 2022, CGI’s work expanded to include managing the company’s IT operations.

Commenting on the success of the partnership, Chief Operations Officer Roland Schleicher said, “In my mind, CGI has several things in its favor: a regional presence combined with global reach, customer proximity, and a very high level of cloud and delivery competence.”

Close by and around the world

Founded in 1976, CGI is among the largest IT and business consulting services firms in the world. Through a client-proximity business model, CGI consultants live and work near clients, collaborating closely and building trusted relationships. These consultants draw upon the advantages of a vast global network to bring the scale, innovation and resources required to help clients achieve business outcomes | www.cgi.com

Your partner in seeing around corners

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PŸUR

Growth rests on strategic pillars

With a successful turnaround behind it, PŸUR can cast its eyes forward. With connectivity and security continuing to be valued by customers due to the cyber threats from the war and the ebband-flow nature of the pandemic, the telecommunications industry is thriving. Internet service providers will need to keep an eye on the competition and think strategically to remain ahead.

A firm believer in the power of three, Roland outlined the three strategic pillars PŸUR is utilizing to reach its goal of becoming the fastest-growing internet service provider in the German market:

“One is fibre rollout. We will invest roughly 2 billion euros over the next ten years bringing fibre to two million households. Germany currently only has a 20% fibre penetration so we’re improving that and closing the gap with other developed nations. “Our second strategic pillar is to become a digital operator so building upon those last couple of years, fully digitizing and automating our operations so we achieve what I call ‘one-click customer journeys’ and also automating all our back-office operations for that.

“The third component is what I call open access. Opening up our network for other brands to also serve those households that our infrastructure connects to. Last year, we launched our first partner Telefónica. This means more competition for our services but it also means more choice and more opportunities for the households and customers to connect to.”

By paying attention to the customer’s voice and providing more variety and choice, PŸUR keeps the customer at the top of the agenda. A significant proof point of this from an external certification perspective is the company’s status as one of the top contenders for the customer service award that is granted annually by Connect, Europe’s renowned telecommunications review magazine. Roland considers this a particularly illustrious feather in the company’s cap, considering the about-turn the company has made in recent years.

Extension works being conducted on the fibre optic network.

PŸUR

Looking to the near future

Looking to the future, Roland is confident PŸUR will achieve its goal. Having successfully navigated a crisis, the company wholeheartedly appreciates the value and capabilities of its close-knit team of talent. In terms of vision for the future, PŸUR aims to tackle two particular areas of activities relating to talent attraction and development.

“One is refitting our office spaces to become more like collaborative meeting places rather than individual workspaces. The second element is that we’re introducing a work model that gives very high flexibility to each employee and also choice. So, one can choose to work 100% mobile or from home, or partially. Or the opposite, work completely from the office. We give them choices. “We believe that Covid has changed how we as a company operate and what type of flexibility is expected and needed. That’s something that has become very important for our current employee base and we also see being extremely critical for our talent in our recruiting,” ended Roland.

www.pyur.com

Telecommunications Feature

Tele Columbus AG Network Centre, Leipzig

PROJECT DIRECTED BY Liv Culling

Sam O’Leary CEO, SLM Solutions

WRITTEN BY Niamh Spence