Telstra counters disruption with bold transformation

If you ask any Australian if they know who Telstra is, the answer would be a definitive yes. Telstra is Australia’s largest communications company with a network that covers 99% of the population. It connects Australians to each other and the rest of the world, and plays a lesser known, but critical role in helping businesses connect their operations.

“Our reach extends to every customer throughout the country, whether you're a farmer out at Parkes or you’re operating a large corporate centre in the CBD. We’re committed to delivering a great customer experience and giving all of these customers the opportunity to connect,” said Nevash Pillay, Global Partners Sales Executive at Telstra.

This commitment together with unprecedented change in the telecommunications industry has led to Telstra’s T22 strategy to radically simplify its products, eliminate customer pain points and create all-digital experiences. As a key technology partner, Salesforce aims to empower Telstra’s people and change the way it connects with its customers.

Telstra is not alone in its need to evolve. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is driving the need for massive change in every industry, and companies like Telstra are adapting to anticipate customer needs and exceed their expectations. “Customer demands have changed so much because their reliance on technology is just so huge. When you take that into consideration, it is easy to see that we had to change,” said Pillay.

The Salesforce Customer Success Platform is helping Telstra to transform and serve its customers in the best way possible. It provides Telstra’s enterprise business with a 360 degree view of customers, empowering collaboration like never before. In the past, customer insights were held in disparate systems and it could take weeks to get a complete view of a customer.

“For the first time, we have everybody collaborating on the same platform for the benefit of our customers, and with the use of Einstein, we’re able to focus on the things that really matter,” said Mirko Gropp, Digital Enablement Principal, Telstra Enterprise.

Telstra's extensive partner network is pivotal to providing customers with market-leading solutions and is essential to the company’s growth. That’s why the company has completely revamped the partner experience using Salesforce Partner Community Cloud. It provides partners with access to the same customer insights and capabilities as Telstra’s account teams and allows them to collaborate in real-time. Together, they can work smarter and more efficiently to deliver better customer outcomes.

“Working with Salesforce and digitising our business has enabled us to work seamlessly with our partners and customers, and accelerate our pace of change. It’s made it easy for all of us to move along the journey of creating business success,” said Pillay.

The transformation has touched all aspects of partner engagement, from on-boarding through to opportunity management and ordering. One of the biggest benefits will be streamlined quoting and contracting which will bring cycle times down from weeks to minutes.

Before Salesforce, Telstra had many outdated and disparate systems, where employees just entered in the minimum information to transact. The sales teams often lacked the information required for meaningful customer engagements and sales and service reps would often need to ask customers for information that they should have already known.

“Everything was complex and administrative,” said Christine Russo, Head of Key Accounts at Telstra. “What Salesforce has done is removed that complexity and made it simple for our people. They can work faster, smarter and better and have more meaningful conversations using insights that they can access from anywhere, at any time.”

Einstein Analytics helps to separate the signal from the noise by surfacing the information that is most important in the context of each interaction. This helps sales reps to be more proactive, and make recommendations tailored to each customer.

The Salesforce Success Cloud team helped to align business and IT leaders on a common vision to improve the experience of Telstra’s partners, employees and customers. It also helped to drive the adoption of Salesforce within Telstra, equipping 4,000 sales and service reps with the insights, content and training to work more efficiently.

Twelve months later, Salesforce user NPS within Telstra has increased 80 points and the company’s sales pipeline and sales are at historic highs. Still, Telstra’s journey is not over yet. The implementation team is using Trailhead to deepen its understanding of the Salesforce platform and continue to innovate on top of it. The team now has over 1,500 badges and several members are certified admins.

“Trailhead has been a great source for my team to progress, learn and really understand the richness of the platform,” said Gropp. “We’re now piloting myTrailhead to enable our users. We want to simplify onboarding and allow users to push themselves to the next level and really take advantage of all that Salesforce offers.”

Telstra is committed to building a sustainable future and creating long-term, shared value for its customers, partners, shareholders, employees and the community. Telstra is also committed to taking its customers into the future; with new age and disruptive technologies like 5G, AI, augmented reality and IoT, it will fundamentally change the way that businesses and consumers connect.

“I think the future success of any company, including Telstra, is to be ahead of the game and serve our customers brilliantly. Partnering with Salesforce helps us achieve these goals,” said Pillay.