“With Salesforce, our team is happier and more productive, customers are more satisfied, and we’re smashing our targets. I’m excited to see what comes next.”

In our fast-paced digital world, the services we rely on the most are the ones we notice the least – from high-speed internet to mobile phone service, or TV packages to fixed landlines, we expect seamless service 24/7 and only take notice when it doesn’t meet our expectations.

Providing reliable, future-proof services for both businesses and consumers is a responsibility that Dutch telecom, KPN➚, takes very seriously. And with Salesforce➚, it’s transforming internal operations to give customers the best possible experience when they purchase new products, reach out for support, or want to manage their accounts.

When KPN for SME decided to transform its digital strategy to become more customer-centric, it needed to align sales, services, and delivery operations to create a smoother customer experience. That meant consolidating four business-critical systems onto a central, stable, and scalable platform to unlock 360-degree visibility.

“We chose Salesforce because it’s a state-of-the-art platform that integrates seamlessly with other solutions,” commented Cremers. “We rolled out Sales Cloud➚, Service Cloud➚, and Communications Cloud➚ to create a single source of the truth across the business.”

The company worked with Salesforce Industries to implement Communications Cloud, which is specially tailored to support end to end processes for telcos. For example, sales, support, and product management teams can create and customise smart product bundles for customers using a simplified product catalogue and easily draw up agreements or quotes for B2B customers. This not only accelerates the sales cycle and reduces time to market, but helps the team to be more productive and offer greater value to customers.

The platform also enables the company to make smarter decisions based on real data, which has triggered a shift in behaviour among employees. “With visibility of how our performance directly impacts NPS, the team is much more motivated to hit their targets and increase KPIs,” said Cremers.

These insights also help to upskill employees. By adopting a policy of total transparency, the team can see both their successes and their mistakes – which means they can learn best practices or identify areas for improvement. “We’ve created a more trusting environment. People are more accountable for their actions and work together to support each other; no one is punished for making a mistake,” Cremers commented. “It’s great to see that spark for self-improvement in the team – everyone wants to be the best they can be.” 

Communications Cloud➚ is also helping to improve performance. Staff can generate quotes instantly instead of in a couple of days, meaning they can target customers when they’re most interested in making a purchase. Using artificial intelligence, the solution can also check that the solution being quoted for is viable for each customer, which is particularly useful for more complex orders for SME or enterprise customers.

To increase cross- and up-sell opportunities, KPN for SME has evolved its service agents into personal solution experts with Service Cloud➚. As well as handling cases and queries, they’re empowered with the skills to help customers get the most out of their products and to sell more relevant or complementary services. 

The solution’s artificial intelligence feature, Einstein➚, provides prompts to help reps identify where to cross-sell, and they can access knowledge articles to learn about a solution or to help them resolve an issue faster.

“At first the service team were scared of being seen as pushy, but Salesforce gives them all the information they need to identify the best opportunities to sell,” explained Cremers. “They’re really happy with the new role now, and they love using Salesforce to give customers more value from their products.”

And, when it comes to handling cases, the team has better insights into who the customer is and why they’re reaching out. This data will also help to address common issues to reduce those incidents from happening at all. 

“The team handles an average of 6,000 cases per week, and only between 5-10% of those are complex enough to require an expert,” said Cremers. “The remaining cases can generally be solved immediately, so we should eventually be able to optimise our processes to eliminate those simple queries.”

Service isn’t the only department to get an overhaul, the company has replaced third-party engineers with an internal team of 200, and with user-friendly workplace technology, new employees can be onboarded and productive faster than ever before.

“Outsourcing was costly and we were only achieving 60-70% first time resolution, but the alternative was to conduct a site survey before sending out an engineer,” Cremers revealed. “We were initially reluctant to spend that upfront, but with better data we realised it actually saves more in the long run.” 

KPN for SME is already well on the way to achieving its goals, and it plans to roll out more Einstein functionality to be more predictive in the future. “At the moment we’re using Salesforce data to look back and learn – we’d like to use it for forecasting too to help us be more proactive,” said Cremers. “So far, everyone is happy with Salesforce. Our team is happier and more productive, customers are more satisfied, and we’re smashing our targets. I’m excited to see what comes next.”