KPN Mobile Improves Customer Experience with RightNow®
Goals:
- Quick and reliable customer service
- Reducing number of emails with customer inquiries
- Align content on website to customers’ needs
Achievements:
- Improved customer experience through increased use of self-service on the web
- Reduction of incoming emails by 70 percent
- Automatic feedback processing aligns FAQs to information needs of customer
- Over four million shown FAQs (and rising). In less than 3 percent cases an email is sent
- Manageable, transparent, and efficient customer service
In the Netherlands, there are more mobile phones than people. KPN Mobile, with its high-quality network, strong brand name and innovative mobile portfolio, is a leader in this market in terms of subscribers and prepaid users. Having millions of users requires the proper delivery of information through a website to prevent the customer service department being flooded with inquiries. KPN selected RightNow to slow and effectively manage the rapid growth of emails.
“Our mobile portfolio is very broad. Also, the capabilities of services grow continuously thanks to technological developments. Add to that the enhanced functionality of today’s mobile phones and one can imagine that KPN Mobile has a lot to explain to its customers. Our websites http://www.kpn.com/ and http://www.hi.nl/ play a pivotal role in the information delivery.” In these clear terms Eric Jepma, Manager Internet Customer Service, paints a picture of how KPN Mobile deals with information delivery to its customers. “More and more questions on subscriptions, manuals, mobile phones, etcetera came in via email. Some time ago we decided this should be handled differently. On the one hand we wanted to enable customers to find information themselves and on the other hand we aimed at reducing the pressure on our customer service department. These two elements will lead to an improved customer experience.”
Explosive Growth
The fast developments within KPN Mobile earlier led to a number of problems. “The number of emails with questions or inquiries increased enormously in a short period of time”, says Jepma. “We had insufficient customer knowledge because of a lack of good reporting. In addition, the existing way of handling emails was unsatisfactory and KPN wanted to improve its internet customer service. The customer service department was hardly able to provide answers on time because of the large amount of emails. It took too much time to answer all requests. In short, we lost grip on our email correspondence. An unwanted and insufficient situation as we put the customers first and want to support them the best we can.”
Striking Gold
KPN Mobile went looking for a way to improve the online customer experience. Jepma: “We had quite a few requirements. First, the chosen solution had to be able to support various contact methods. In addition, it should be intelligent enough to record surfing behavior and feedback of website visitors automatically. It should be possible to use the results to adjust the content to the practical needs of clients.” KPN got into contact with RightNow and after a demo it was instantly clear that this provider’s solution was the right one. “With RightNow we felt we had struck gold,” says Jepma. “And this feeling came true as practice has shown. RightNow has translated our vision, namely that content and experience result in knowledge, perfectly in its solutions. RightNow also thinks that customer feedback should be used to align online content to customer needs.”
Frequently Asked Questions
With intelligent monitoring and analyzing tools the RightNow solution shows the specific information needs of KPN Mobile customers. “This works both ways,” says Jepma. “The RightNow system records customers’ questions and is able to make links. By combining frequently asked questions we can compile a relevant list of FAQs. Visitors to the website can search this list using search terms. The powerful aspect is that the solution ‘learns’, enabling us to constantly refine the FAQs by putting the most asked questions on top. We make the FAQs dynamic, enabling us to make changes immediately. Thanks to the improved FAQs the number of incoming emails has been strongly reduced. Only three percent of visiting customers feels the need to send an email. This astounding effort will even improve when we combine agent specific FAQs via RightNow with the FAQs on the web.”
RightNow’s capabilities for KPN have not ended by far. “In my view we are only at the beginning,” says Jepma. “In addition to email we also have others means of communicating with customers. The nice thing about the RightNow solution is that it supports various contact methods, including chat and forum. RightNow itself also advises us on ways to manage and adjust these methods. This is necessary so that these methods strengthen each other instead of being in each others way.”
Chat and Forum
With regard to contact possibilities KPN Mobile has quite a few things in store thanks to RightNow. Jepma: “Soon customers will be able to chat with employees from our customer service department. This personal attention will improve the customer experience. But it also offers new chances for KPN Mobile. In this quarter we will link a chat robot to our FAQs. The experiences of the chat robot can be used to further improve the content of the website.” In addition http://www.hi.nl/ offers a forum that is especially meant for questions on mobile phones. “Many companies are afraid to offer forum capabilities because they fear criticism,” says Jepma. “We, on the other hand, regard forums as a way to learn from customer experiences. Thanks to RightNow we can use this customer feedback to further improve our information delivery. Forums also offer our subscribers and prepaid users the chance to ask each other questions on mobile phones for example.”
Managing and improving customer experience were the main reasons for KPN to select RightNow. “But,” says Jepma, “the cost reduction we have realized by implementing this solution is a nice additional advantage. We are very happy with the results.”
KPN Mobile Support Site | KPN Moblie Homepage
About KPN Mobile
KPN is the leading multimedia company in the Netherlands and offers consumers fixed and mobile telephone, internet and television. KPN offers voice, internet and data services, as well as managed and outsourced ICT solutions to business customers. KPN also provide wholesale networks services to third parties including operators and service providers. Its mobile activities in Germany and Belgium use a multibrand strategy and serve different customer segments in the business and consumer market.
Greg Gianforte