Customer service has become a true competitive differentiator. Indeed, research shows that companies that lead in customer experience outperform those that neglect customer service by nearly 80%. We spoke to Orange Wholesale International Senior VP for Customer Service and Operations Michel Levisse about the importance of customer service in making your customers happier and more loyal, and what Orange Wholesale International is doing to achieve that.
Q. How does Orange Wholesale International differentiate from other wholesale service providers in terms of customer service?
A. We’ve committed to giving our customers a great experience and giving them the best possible service at every step of their journey with us. From start to finish, we want our customers to always feel valued and know that we have their business’ best interests at heart. With that in mind, one example of what we do is support them until full resolution of any given issue. Where other providers might seek to move on from a customer service incident as soon as possible, we see it through. Another provider might close a ticket as soon as they have identified that the root cause of an incident is not within their network. We prefer to support our customers until their incident is resolved to their complete satisfaction, not just demonstrating that we are not responsible for the incident.
Q. And what specifically are you doing to accomplish that?
A. Digitalization is a big part of our commitment to our customer service. For example, we offer a comprehensive portal called Orange eCare that gives our customers much more agility and autonomy to report incidents, track progress and find historical information. The portal also provides real-time monitoring to view network traffic and Quality of Service (QoS), and monthly reporting. We want our customers to be as informed as possible about the service we give them.
Q. What steps are you taking to meet or exceed your customers’ expectations?
A. I am a big believer in proactivity. Give customers great service before they realize that they need it, and they will love you for it! Research by Gartner found that proactive customer service delivers a full percentage point increase in your net promoter score and your customer satisfaction score.
So we are in the process of deploying tools that will enable us to proactively inform customers of any incidents in our network that could affect their services, even before they notice an issue. And the tools will enable us to qualify the impact of an incident on the service the customer is buying from us.
It will have a cyclical effect and benefit: because the troubleshooting process will start before customers have noticed any impact, we will be able to resolve the incident much faster. We will also be able to immediately inform customers of the possible root cause and estimate the restore time. As a result, our customers will have valuable information right away that they can then share with their own customers.
Q. That sounds like a positive step. What else will these tools do?
A. We are confident that our new suite of tools will deliver on three objectives that our customers have said are important: one, we will be able to detect complex incidents more quickly and efficiently. Two, we will be better equipped to support customers who are impacted and address specific ways that they are impacted. Three, will be able to give customers greater visibility on the progress of incident resolution.
We are aware that there is a very strong correlation between how we handle incidents and the overall level of our customers’ satisfaction. So it is something we are taking very seriously. In fact, after an incident has been resolved, all our customers receive a satisfaction survey, because we want to know we are meeting and exceeding their expectations. If any customer remains unhappy after that, we contact them directly to understand any concerns they have, define action plans and work with them to improve their service. Our philosophy is one of continuous improvement.
Q. What other actions are you taking to keep customers satisfied?
A. We’re always focused on more efficient delivery. We know that delivery times are critical for our customers and are also a key driver of customer satisfaction. So we work constantly to identify ways we can reduce our delivery times without affecting the quality of implementations.
One way of doing this is by establishing very clear project milestones from the start of a project. By sharing those milestones with our customers, we establish a strong cooperative bond that agrees expectations, limits misunderstandings, and is beneficial across the entire delivery chain both within Wholesale International and our customers.
