Siminn Delivers Fast, Rewarding Customer Care with Salesforce Service & Support

"We smiled for a month when we first saw the real-time dashboards and reports. They mean we can respond quickly to issues, make service improvements and maximize the use of resources."

Overview
Challenge
  • Combat post-privatization competition via seamless, higher quality customer service experience
  • Retain customers for longer, maximize revenue per customer and ensure ongoing customer satisfaction
  • Replace myriad of different systems historically used to manage customer care
  • Slow, complex process to route cases from the call center to the second line of backend technical staff
Solution
  • Leading Icelandic telco provider deploys multi-tenant customer care system from salesforce.com (over SAP, RightNow and Microsoft) to 490 agents to unify customer care across multiple channels. Includes CTI integration, call scripting and adoption of 10 AppExchange applications.
Results
  • Streamlined complex customer service processes, automated workflow, and increased productivity
  • Enabled teams to review, escalate, and route customer inquiries using multi-tier support queue capabilities
  • Introduced highly effective real-time analytics, covering call center performance dashboards, agent performance, and customer issue analysis
  • Led to Siminn being able to shut down eight legacy customer care systems
Full Story

In the same way Iceland bridges the gap between the U.S. and Europe, salesforce.com is bridging the gap in Siminn’s customer care. The company—Iceland’s leading telco provider—has deployed Salesforce Service & Support to 490 employees in Reykjavik to manage the complete lifecycle of customer service, from logging cases to suggesting and delivering solutions across multiple channels. The easy-to-use, low risk multi-tenant system is maximizing agent productivity, providing opportunities to cross-sell and up-sell services, while simultaneously ensuring customers receive responsive, rewarding service. This way, Siminn is also driving up revenue per user while increasing customer loyalty and retention.

Iceland’s number one telco provider

Siminn provides fixed line telecommunications, mobile phone and Internet services to private and corporate customers in Iceland. The company’s range of services and solutions includes fixed and mobile subscriptions as well as Broadband/DSL solutions, IP TV and Centrex network solutions.

Iceland is commonly ranked among the most sophisticated countries in the world in terms of information and communication technology. And for good reason. Although the country’s population is relatively small (300,000), approximately 90 percent of households are equipped with a computer, and more than 80 percent are connected to the Internet. ADSL penetration in Iceland is now the highest in the world with 25.9 subscribers per 100 inhabitants (according to an OECD study); and the recent launch of an IPTV broadcast service by Siminn has captured 26,500 subscribers—equivalent to more than 40 percent of IT ADSL customers or approximately 19 percent of Icelandic households.

Each and every one of these customers expects great service from Siminn—whether it’s for fixed line, mobile or data communications. Following a company-wide branding strategy work in 2004, privatization in 2005 and the subsequent advent of open competition—the company re-modeled its strategy towards delivering a more seamless, higher quality customer service experience. The ultimate goal being to retain customers for longer, maximize revenue per customer and ensure ongoing customer satisfaction.

Not an easy task when the systems which were historically being used to manage customer care are revealed. Siminn customer care was previously using a multitude of systems which had little or no connection to each other. This meant that for one particular type of issue frontline customer care staff would use system A; for others they would use system B—and some customer enquiries were never filed in any system at all! This situation meant that the call center had a difficult time understanding the issues customers were facing since they had to look it up in various systems. Siminn sales people had very little (if any) overview of support issues. Moreover, it was a slow, complex process to route cases from the call center to the second or third line of backend technical staff. There was also an inevitable dependence on email, with many cases lost or hidden in private inboxes.

Understanding needs, behavior and preferences

“We had no clear view of the situation our customers faced,” explains Simin’s Project Manager, Linda Waage. “We couldn’t see if they had visited or purchased from a retail outlet, whether they had made an enquiry via the Web, or the history of their contact with the call center. Before we supported our customers, it was clear we needed to understand their needs, behavior and preferences.”

Although Siminn has deployed an SAP ERP system to support its back office environment, SAP was not deemed the appropriate choice for the new CRM system. “We wanted a less complex, more straightforward and easy-to-deploy system. It was our estimation that in the light of few telcos using SAP CRM we would have to spent too much time in the consultancy phase alone and that was not acceptable for our project,” says Waage.

Following a needs analysis from the Siminn business units, it became apparent that the company needed a flexible, on-demand, multi-tenant CRM service—a CRM system that could be deployed quickly with minimal risk, investment, and implementation time and resources. Salesforce.com, RightNow and Microsoft were each shortlisted for the task, with salesforce.com the preferred choice. Waage explains why. “Salesforce.com listened carefully to our customer care issues. They understood the challenges we were facing and made a concerted effort to customize Salesforce there and then to tackle those challenges. The rapid and easy customization capabilities were astounding and this—c oupled with salesforce.com’s responsiveness and of course the proven deployment worldwide—convinced us that it was the right choice.”

The company has deployed Salesforce Service & Support to 490 employees to manage all inquiries from 200,000 households and 50,000 businesses in Iceland. Sophisticated tools enable agents to streamline complex customer service processes, automate workflow, and increase their productivity. Moreover, multi-tier support queue capabilities enable individuals and groups to review, escalate, and route customer inquiries as appropriate. Case escalations are also based on the time the case is created, and all escalation actions remain active until the case is closed. Further, all customer issues are now filed in Salesforce (the call center is currently receiving up to 20,000 calls each week from customers). Even cases that are completed at the call center are filed—something that Siminn neglected to do prior to introducing Salesforce. Since the implementation, Siminn has been able to shut down eight portals in customer care systems. And more of these will follow soon.

The Siminn system includes CTI integration, call scripting and the adoption of up to 10 AppExchange applications. These include Strategic Account Planning, Recruiting, ClickTools Project and Issue Management, and Print Anything. “Training staff to use Salesforce was incredibly easy. They picked up the skills to use the system in half the time we expected!” she says.

Customers who can’t find the appropriate solution to their enquiry online can instantly and easily log a new case using the integrated Email-To-Case functionality. Using this, Siminn can now make sure that support requests that come through email are routed with ease within the company. And this self-service is complemented by highly effective real-time analytics, covering call center performance dashboards, agent performance, customer issue analysis and much more. Analytics is also being used to tag the value of individual customer segments, so that when a customer contacts Siminn using their preferred channel, agents can view how long they have been a customer, their spending pattern, and—later this year—the type of services they use. Waage sums up the analytics functionality when she says, “We smiled for a month when we first saw the real-time dashboards and reports. They mean we can respond quickly to issues, make service improvements, and maximize the use of resources.”

Based on the success of the system, Siminn’s Sales department is the next target for adopting Salesforce.


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