The aim of our digital strategy, which I described in my previous blog, is to make things really enjoyable and easy for our customers. With our WiFi app, for example, which allows you to easily scan the WiFi signal strength in your home with the aid of Augmented Reality and based on that to receive a recommendation in order to make your WiFi perfect. Or through the ever-smarter customer service system. As a result of this system, you are given the solution by the service employee already without having to explain the problem. To achieve that positive customer experience, we are working more and more digitally. And every day, we strive to be among the digital leaders.
Real cooperation
In order to become a digital leader and to make sure we remain one, we are drastically changing the way we work. Colleagues no longer stay within their own departments, but increasingly work in multidisciplinary teams. In this way, for example, a marketeer, an IT specialist and a data scientist can cooperate in one team and they don’t get stuck within their own field of expertise. Their joint knowledge really makes the difference to customers.
This is how schade.ziggo.nl came into being, for example, within a multidisciplinary team. At the beginning of the coronavirus crisis, many people were working in their garden and that sometimes went wrong: perhaps one of your internet cables bit the dust too? Because colleagues from many disciplines were working together in one team, we already saw early on that there was a sharp increase in these types of issues. That team then developed schade.ziggo.nl in a very short space of time. You can report your damage in four languages here, after which our technicians will drop by to solve the problem quick as a flash.That innovative process has saved us lots of time and customers were able to get back to work with our products as soon as possible.
Being flexible
In our fast-changing world, it is crucial that we are able to respond quickly to the customers’ demands, and our multidisciplinary teams are able to do that! They easily switch between subjects or approaches. Every two weeks, they jointly determine which new subjects need to be tackled first, which they then prepare, implement, test and improve themselves. They get the input for their work from the quarterly business review. Every quarter, we coordinate our strategic goals with the entire company during this meeting and we choose priorities for the coming quarter. This makes us flexible: we can change course quick as a flash. Think of us a huge shoal of fish all moving in the same direction, which can suddenly turn in the other direction where necessary.
Challenges
We sometimes come across each other in our new flexible way of working. The sudden freedom to determine your own course – within VodafoneZiggo's strategy – is still difficult sometimes for colleagues. I’ve noticed that there is a high level of motivation, but that feeling and seizing freedom takes some getting used to. Moreover, we have to be on top of the latest developments at all times in order to provide the best and most innovative customer experience. That’s a learning process. All colleagues here work with the latest tools and resources and continue to test whether their actions actually help create that amazing digital customer experience. And as a result of that, new experience arise.
Digital working
Our teams also develop digital solutions for themselves and each other, which our customers, in turn, reap the benefits from. That’s precisely what we want with our strategy. Take the market research tool, for example. That was developed by the marketing research team, so all teams are able to conduct their own market research. They can set that up in just two hours, within two days they have the results and they can further improve their product, in turn, based on a better understanding of what customers think and want. In addition, more than 2,000 colleagues are now using an online tool Qlik, with which they can retrieve all relevant data from our systems within just a few clicks. In this way, everyone can do their work on the basis of the most up-to-date insights and we don’t need to reinvent the wheel. These types of tools make us faster, more efficient and more flexible. And your customer experience smoother.
The B2B Business Scan is another example of data-driven working. We use this tool in our contact with small and medium-sized businesses in order to be able to offer them a perfectly-suited product. The customer answers a few questions online about his/her business and the tool immediately tells him/her which ICT systems are best suited to his/her situation. In this way, he/she can receive tailor-made advice, whenever he/she wants. And if the customer’s situation changes, the customer can easily adjust his/her product himself/herself.
Another paragon of good cooperation between departments is the WiFi Crew, where our best WiFi experts, from engineering and customer contact, come together. Customers who pass on a complaint about their internet connection via telephone or chat can now be helped increasingly often using advanced tools, which we can offer remotely. Should that not provide a solution, we have a team of specialists ready to solve the fault at the customer’s location in double-quick time.
Building towards a secure future
What challenges are we going to come up against in the future? I anticipate that privacy and security will become even more important than they are already now. We can only achieve the best customer experience by using your data. We can only collect that data if we continue to do that ethically and securely, and you trust us to do that. Otherwise, you’d reject the experience with us altogether. And we are continuing to build successful tools, of course, so that our teams can perform their work quickly and effectively.
It’s only this way that we can create a culture with motivated people who achieve results and offer customer the best possible help. I want colleagues within VodafoneZiggo to feel that what they’re doing really matters. If colleagues are able to experience that every day and we strive to achieve the best for our customers with outstanding teams, there will be no stopping this digital organisation.
Robin Kroes
Robin Kroes maps out VodafoneZiggo's digital transformation and is the board member responsible for Strategy. Prior to that, he was responsible for the integration of UPC and Ziggo as VP Strategy & Corporate Development.