Swisscom Fixnet: Building the Foundation for Next-generation Broadband
The Swisscom Group, Switzerland’s leading telecommunications company, employs more than 15,000 people and had revenues of CHF 7.3 billion (USD 5.8 billion) for the first three quarters of 2005. Swisscom Group’s fixed-line subsidiary, Swisscom Fixnet, is the largest unit within Swisscom Group; it distributes services and products, manages the network infrastructure, and sells national and international network services. Under its Bluewin brand, it runs the largest portal of Internet services in Switzerland and has provided broadband to an ever-growing number of homes and businesses—more than one million ADSL access lines today, representing one of the top positions in Europe for ADSL-penetration.
Like most incumbent telcos, Swisscom Fixnet has been busy developing new ways to expand its broadband business into new service areas such as IP-television (IPTV), voiceover-IP and advanced home networking. The company has also made it a high priority to ensure that delivering new innovation doesn’t detract from the superior experience Swisscom customers expect.
“We feel that it’s important to focus 100 percent of our business efforts on ensuring that we meet and exceed the needs of our customers,” says Joe Müller, Swisscom Fixnet’s Head of Customer Care.
With eager competitors working hard to lure away Bluewin customers, the company’s service-oriented approach is a wise strategy. Thanks in large part to forward-looking decisions of the Fixnet management team and a Texas-based company called Motive, Inc., Swisscom Fixnet is prepared to maintain its leadership position well into the future.
Greater Complexity Intensifies the Challenge
Growth and diversification pose a big challenge for any provider: how to flawlessly deliver an inherently more complex set of services while keeping customer support costs in check. Add to that the rapid acquisition of less technical customers, and the challenge increases exponentially.
Swisscom Fixnet’s Customer Care organization understands this challenge better than most. Joe Müller and his team recognized in the early days of broadband that their organization plays a crucial role in supporting the company’s growth strategies, while ensuring that it delivers total customer satisfaction.
As Mr. Müller puts it, “The opposing forces of expansion create a troubling dilemma [for any customer care operation] that must be approached with strategic foresight. Back in 2002, we knew that we needed a viable and lasting solution to a situation that would only intensify. We also knew that it would be unwise to delay such a vital decision.”
The customer care software platform that Mr. Müller and his team started building three years ago is now an essential foundation that allows Swisscom Fixnet Customer Care to compete—in new services arenas and in new customer segments—without the threat of runaway operations costs.
Seeing the Value of Support Automation Early
In 2002, supporting an initially slow-growing broadband market and only 20,000 customers, Joe Müller had already begun contemplating a support automation solution with Stefan Bühler, his representative and head of the Competence Center, an important unit within Customer Care that is responsible for support plans, including ADSL activation and customer support.
Although Customer Care’s existing manual support methods were still efficient and cost-effective, Mr. Müller and Mr. Bühler knew that as a result of Swisscom’s success and marketing efforts, the subscriber base was likely to grow. They were right. About one year later, the growth rate became rapid and the number of calls increased accordingly, while the headcount within Customer Care was frozen. In order to maintain a high standard of customer service, while at the same time keeping the cost of manual support in control, Customer Care took a closer look at support automation.
The most pressing problem was the increasing number of support calls regarding rather simple problems; Customer Care believed that by offering automated self-help, customers would happily solve their own problems without picking up the telephone at all.
After careful evaluation of several solutions, Mr. Müller and Mr. Bühler selected software from Motive, Inc. One of the reasons was Motive’s breadth of offerings; it could supply the Customer Care unit with a comprehensive suite of intelligent support solutions, not just one or two tools.
“We knew Motive was the right solution for the long term,” says Mr. Müller, “and we were successful in getting the other members of the executive board to agree.”
Another reason for the selection of Motive was the company’s track record in Europe, explains Stefan Bühler.
“Motive’s reputation in Europe was solid,” says Mr. Bühler. “Its products were performing well at other European companies [such as Deutsche Telecom and BT]. We visited several companies and became confident that, like them, we could improve our performance with a Motive solution.”
Avoiding Unnecessary Calls
With characteristic Swiss diligence, Swisscom Fixnet began the business relationship with Motive by deploying and evaluating its software one solution at a time. The first was a new Motive-based Bluewin support service called “Quick Help,” which for the first time allowed subscribers to solve many of their own problems with no assistance.
Swisscom Fixnet closely monitored the performance of Quick Help, via quarterly review meetings with Motive. Results showed that customers using Quick Help made only one-third as many support calls as customers who didn’t.
“The numbers prove that we made the right decision,” says Mr. Bühler. “With Quick Help, customers solve problems themselves, quickly and easily, which pleases the customer. We, on the other hand, have more time to assist customers with more complex problems.”
Mr. Bühler adds, “Furthermore, when Quick Help users do call the help lines, call duration is reduced. Our support team can solve their problems more quickly, because the software automatically gathers the necessary diagnostic information.”
Today, Swisscom Fixnet continues to reap the benefits from the Quick Help service, and customers remain enthusiastic about its speed, power and ease of use. And true to form, Swisscom Fixnet is still monitoring results on a quarterly basis.
“The quarterly review is one thing that we continue with Motive even today,” says Mr. Müller. “We especially appreciate that the vendor analyzes performance with us and gives us practical advice. We are grateful for this help because we benefit quite a lot from Motive’s experience and good ideas.”
By the summer of 2004, Customer Care was satisfied with the first phase of the relationship with Motive and was ready to tackle a new challenge.
Adding Automation to Service Installation
The next most pressing issue for Swisscom Fixnet was the process of broadband activation—specifically, the rapidly increasing rate of new activations, and the volume of subscribers who required assistance with new services.
In part because Swisscom Fixnet had introduced a reduced-price ADSL service (about six dollars per month, including a free modem), the company was signing up as many as 12,000 new subscribers per week—a completely overwhelming rate.
The composition of the subscriber base was also changing: increasingly, new subscribers were less-experienced users or new to PCs, such as grandparents who just wanted to exchange email and photos with their grandchildren. These people began to consume more time and attention. Mr. Müller knew that serving the “new” subscriber base was going to require him to invest more time and resources that he didn’t have.
Once again, after careful evaluation, Customer Care turned to the industry leader, Motive. This time, they used the company’s software to build and launch a Bluewin installation service called “ADSL Assistant.” This provided customers—even those with minimal PC experience—a computer interface that walked them through the steps for installing and activating ADSL service.
While returns on this investment are still being quantified, early data has shown that once again Mr. Müller’s team made a significant contribution to Swisscom Fixnet’s business: automated broadband installation removed a major obstacle that jeopardized Fixnet’s growth and could have resulted in customers moving to the competition.
According to Mr. Bühler: “Using Motive software in combination with our core products, such as ADSL or IPTV, we can show that we build sophistication into our services—that we are on the leading edge of technology.”
A Foundation for the Future
As Swisscom Fixnet continues to change and evolve, it will be selling not just minutes but “content and emotions.” The newest goal is to launch a full service TV offering with a broad range of programs, a set-top box with integrated hard disk and the possibility of recording and viewing simultaneously via a single IP connection. In addition to greater complexities that must be addressed, Mr. Müller’s team knows that customer expectations and emotions for TV services are going to be even greater.
Mr. Müller gives two examples of what is meant by emotions: An IPTV customer is frustrated because he can’t get a football game on his TV set. He doesn’t care about whether Swisscom Fixnet has a problem with access, or with ADSL, or with the set-top box. All he cares about is the football game.
Or a customer who lives in Zurich is planning to drive to his chalet in the mountains, and wants to be able to turn up the heat before he leaves Zurich. He doesn’t care about how ADSL makes it possible to do that; all he wants is for the chalet to be warm and cozy when he arrives. “Things like that are going to be the challenge of the future: providing the customer with all the advantages and comfort of new technologies and services while keeping them easy and simple for him to manage,” says Mr. Müller.
“That’s why we’re convinced that we did the right thing when we decided two years ago to invest heavily in software that can help us build management automation into our entire network—and to keep delivering the world-class customer experience that we’ve come to be known for.”
Mr. Bühler adds: “Motive software has helped us build new efficiencies into our core products and services, and establish a competitive advantage in the race to deliver next-generation service innovation.”
Swisscom Fixnet is the leader in its market, and plans to be the leader five years from now. And one thing is certain: the Customer Care organization and the vision of people like Joe Müller and Stefan Bühler is going to be a big reason why.
