|
| sunrise/TDC Switzerland AG |
| Headquarters: |
Zurich, Switzerland |
| Website: |
www.sunrise.ch |
| Employees: |
2,200 |
| Revenue: |
$922M in 2001 |
| Subscribers: |
2.3M |
 Read Case Study | The Swiss mobile phone market has reached 80 percent saturation. This has led one of the leading providers, sunrise, to dramatically change its business strategy and begin focusing on customer retention and excellence in customer service.
These are critical challenges in maintaining and growing market share and increasing revenue. sunrise owes its success to its knowledge and understanding of its customers, which enables the company to deliver more personalized products and services than its rivals.
Amdocs CRM is at the heart of this success, because it has given sunrise an in-depth view of each customer, including relationship history and market segment, as well as what additional products and services customers will want in the future.
At sunrise, Amdocs CRM is the epicenter of all its CRM systems and allows sunrise to understand customers and respond to their needs faster and more effectively. As a result, since it started deploying Amdocs CRM, sunrise has significantly reduced customer churn.
Amdocs CRM is the key to our customer retention strategy.
Andreas Bangnowski
Director of IT CRM Systems
sunrise
sunrise, the second largest telecommunications company in Switzerland and a division of Tele Danmark, was formed by the merger between two Swiss telecommunication service providers, sunrise and diAx. The company became TDC Switzerland AG, operating under the familiar sunrise brand. sunrise offers a broad range of services, including mobile and fixed telephony, internet access and e-mail, and broadband networking services. Today, sunrise has over 2.3 million business and consumer customers, including one million mobile phone users and 1.3 million using sunrise's fixed network and internet services.
A large portion of sunrise's mobile customers are pre-pay, which is a significant factor in reducing customer churn and a good foundation from which to provide additional services. Mobile phone services represent most of sunrise's business and almost 50 percent of its customers. However, the mobile market is also where sunrise has faced its greatest challengecustomer retention.
With little market expansion opportunity, Swiss mobile operators are pursuing fewer new customers. Customers changing service providers in search of lower prices and better services (a process known as churn) further aggravates the situation. sunrise has an important business goal: to increase customer loyalty and retain customers by delivering excellent customer service.
sunrise's strategy has been three-fold: 1) to use price and service offerings to make products attractive; 2) to provide the best technology and geographical coverage; and 3) to leverage its brand.
But managing millions of customers with multifaceted segments, attributes, and demands has presented sunrise with a big challenge. In such a situation, effectively applying the principles of customer relationship management (CRM) is complex and demanding.
"Amdocs CRM gives us a single view of our customers, from buying trends right down to when an individual customer uses their mobile most frequently."
Before the merger, sunrise and diAx had already started to use Amdocs CRM. For Andreas Bangnowski, sunrise's Director of IT CRM Systems, the choice of a CRM solution was almost a foregone conclusion. Amdocs CRM was and still is the leading CRM tool, especially for the telecommunications industry. It accommodates all aspects of our operation, from business and consumer sales segmentation to fulfillment, trouble ticketing, and service level agreement management. Amdocs CRM is also flexible enough to support changes in our business and the market.
Bangnowski particularly values the ability of Amdocs CRM to integrate with other business systems, such as the company's SAP applications and its financial and billing systems. Amdocs CRM is the most integrated system I have ever seen, says Bangnowski. He adds that when sunrise and diAx merged, integrating the two Amdocs CRM systems took just five months.
At sunrise, Amdocs CRM acts as the main front office application for customer relationship management. Seven hundred customer care agents use Amdocs CRM, including the company's three call center operations in Zurich, Biel, and Lausanne. A key benefit of Amdocs CRM is its multilingual capability, which is especially important to the Swiss market,
as most residents speak only one of the three official languages, German, French, and Italian.
sunrise's CRM strategy is based on Amdocs CRM. The company takes its commitment to customer loyalty so seriously that it has created dedicated customer retention teams. These teamswhich comprise a range of functions, from sales and customer care to back office supportanalyze customer data gathered by Amdocs CRM to identify new services, predict problems before they occur, and spot future buying trends. For example, one sunrise brand value is serving the whole family. By identifying a married couple, the teams can offer special family packages that would include selling additional service to the children.
"With Amdocs CRM, we know how and when every single customer lead developed, the products and services the customer uses, any complaints or problems, and each customer's value in terms of revenue.
Amdocs CRM is the key to our customer retention strategy. It's at the center of all our systems, says Bangnowski. Most importantly, Amdocs CRM gives us a single view of our customers, from buying trends right down to when an individual customer uses their mobile most frequently. With Amdocs CRM, we know how and when every single customer
lead developed, the products and services the customer uses, any complaints or problems, and each customer's value in terms of revenue.
With comprehensive customer information, sunrise's customer care agents become a one-stop' contact for customer inquiries. Giving customer care agents first-hand access to customer information has a significant impact on our business. It enables us to achieve our one call resolution' objective, making the call with the customer shorter, which in turn means the customer is more satisfied, says Bangnowski.
Should a customer call with a complaint, the agent can assess the case far more accurately with Amdocs CRM, based on information such as previous problems and how effectively they have been solved, whether the complaint is valid, etc. The information provided by Amdocs CRM has also enabled sunrise to give its agents more authority to make instant decisions.
"Amdocs CRM is flexible enough to support changes in our business and the market."
sunrise is happy because agent quality and information accuracy improves. And customers are happy because they don't have to make several calls to get a problem solved, and they feel they are getting good service. These benefits are also helping sunrise to reduce its operational costs, because call handlers are operating more efficiently and can deal with more inquiries than previously.
sunrise commissions an external agency with conducting anonymous inbound customer inquiries to sunrise's call centers. These tests prove that issues are being resolved faster and that customer care agents are better able to respond to inquiries quickly and flexibly. Amdocs CRM makes possible improved customer service levels even as it helps to strengthen the sunrise brand.
Amdocs CRM is important to sunrise's brand strategy because the company uses CRM to segment its customer base for more focused customer targeting. For instance, young people typically like new and exciting products and services, but tend to change their mobile phone annually. With Amdocs CRM, sunrise can quickly and easily segment customer groups, as well as identify aspects such as how long customers keep their phone, so the company can create highly targeted marketing campaigns
designed to hit customers just when they start to think about phone and service upgrades.
Amdocs CRM accommodates all aspects of our operation, from business and consumer sales segmentation to fulfillment, trouble ticketing, and service level agreement management.
Amdocs CRM also helps sunrise determine customer needs and lifestyle. For example, it identifies frequent travelers so sunrise can offer them its mobile office services.The ability to build knowledge of, and relationships with, our customers is by far the biggest benefit of Amdocs CRM, because we can do so much more to increase customer loyalty and retention, says Bangnowski.
The most telling result in sunrise's success with Amdocs CRM is that the company has significantly reduced customer churn. It is tangible evidence that using Amdocs CRM has enabled sunrise to obtain much more information and knowledge about its customers, which has helped the company improve customer service, increase customer loyalty, and enhance sunrise's business.
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