Orange Belgium’s Secret to Success

By transforming with Salesforce, Orange Belgium increased efficiency and enhanced the customer experience. What’s more, it successfully launched its new platform during the pandemic.

During the Salesforce Industries Summit, we heard from more than 65 industry leaders and product experts about how they’re driving success in the digital era. In this blog, we share Orange Belgium’s success story.

How Orange Belgium built a new journey for its customers

Orange Belgium is part of Orange Group – the eighth largest telecoms company in the world. Its Belgian operation has 1,400 employees, 1.6 million active SIM cards, and revenues of €1.3 billion. The company offers mobile, TV, and internet services to consumers. It also serves businesses and is a wholesale operator, providing numerous partners with access to its infrastructure.

For companies like Orange Belgium, agility is vital. In the telecoms market, the innovation cycle is fast and competitive advantage depends upon being first to market. So, when the telecoms company launched a new simplified portfolio of B2C products (covering Postpaid Mobile, TV, and Internet), it was keen to enhance the customer journey with easier processes.

“Legacy processes were billing-driven and based on a homegrown order management system with limited capabilities,” reveals Ajinkya Shah, Senior Solution Architect at Orange Belgium. “We wanted to build new customer journeys that were more customer-oriented and efficient.”

To achieve these goals, Orange Belgium embarked on an ambitious digital transformation project. This helped it increase agility, become more customer- and value-driven, and reduce time to market.

Taking an Agile approach to creating customer-oriented journeys

Partnering with Deloitte, Orange Belgium selected a new technology stack based on Salesforce Communications Cloud. The tech stack included various integrations including Oracle ERP, Sigma Systems, and Couchbase. The complex program involved more than 300 people and resulted in 2,500 Salesforce users.

The team’s approach to the project included customer-centric design processes and Agile scrum delivery. Its initial objective was to achieve a minimum viable proposition for each of its three core customer journeys: I buy, I manage, and I terminate.

With multiple integrations, every sprint had to be carefully timed and aligned to enable continuous testing. “We had so many components that it was critical to align sprints and test integrations as we went, rather than leaving it until the end,” says Vincent Debusschere, Engagement Partner, Deloitte Belgium. “We also conducted Friendly User Testing as soon as possible. This way, we were able to identify and eliminate issues very early on.”

How Orange Belgium pivoted a rapid change of plan

The project team had everything perfectly planned to launch the new platform in early March. The launch included a big training event at a football stadium and a Hypercare war room – and then COVID hit.

Instead, the team started to train employees in small groups in-store and switched to fully digital war rooms. “Within the week, we had to close all our stores and moved to a fully virtual sales model,” explains Willems. “Luckily, we had trained 250 internal Orange ambassadors in advance, and were able to leverage them to educate the rest of the staff.”

Increased efficiency, simpler self-service, and a better CX

Despite this challenge, Orange Belgium’s rollout was a massive success, enabling the company to achieve all its original objectives. The benefits include:

• Digital improvements by simplifying processes for the e-shop and online Customer Zone
• Faster and smoother activations thanks to greater automation in order management
• Real-time customer updates across all channels

In fact, the order entry time for the ‘I Buy’ customer journey was reduced by 27% and for I Manage by 39%. “Since the project, we’ve seen an increase in self-service tariff changes from 10% to 45%; a rise in distant cable orders from 26% to 42%; and postpaid mobile services through distant channels are up from 16% to 25%,” adds Willems.

With the first phase of Orange Belgium’s digital transformation complete, next on the company’s agenda is:

• Extending the same capabilities to B2C sales
• Rolling out Salesforce knowledge management
• Implementing case management and care interaction management

Thanks to the new platform, Orange Belgium has the agility, customer-centricity, and seamless processes it needs to continue to succeed in today’s digital world.

Learn more about blazing new trails to richer customer relationships with our solutions tailored to the Communications industry.