Company: Orange Belgium
Company background: Orange Belgium SA (Orange), a subsidiary of Orange Group, offers postpaid and prepaid mobile telecom products and services to its customers. It provides mobile data, fixed line data, internet, combined solutions, and digital subscriber line services. The company also offers mobile phone equipment and services; voice, data and internet services; and mobile network and fixed network services. It offers fixed line telecoms through the DSL network and broadband internet. The company serves residential and corporate customers, self-employed professionals, small and medium-sized enterprises, large firms, and institutions. It also offers television and internet services through cable network in Belgium. The company has business presence in Belgium and Luxembourg. Orange is headquartered in Brussels, Belgium.
Contact: Anne Godts
Title: Customer Excellence Manager
Related URLs:
https://community.orange.be/t5/Bienvenue-sur-le-Forum-Tribe/ct-p/francais
https://community.heytelecom.be/t5/Welkom-in-de-hey-community/ct-p/CommunityNL
Kudos Category: Best-in-Class: Digital
1. What challenges did your organization face that required a digital strategy? Provide details on the issues you were trying to resolve or the goals you were trying to achieve. (e.g. reducing handle time, improving CSAT, reducing per-interaction costs, etc.)
We started our digital journey in 2011 with the creation of our Facebook & Twitter pages. We were quite pioneers in Belgium 12 years ago & tested a lot the ways to interact with our customers without exactly knowing how they would react. Our aim was to provide the needed support to customers who had troubles or questions in public & in private messaging, but also to create a human connection with them and to get rid of the image of a big unreachable multinational. It worked: not only do the customers know who our team is, we regularly organize games & fun moments for our customers. Companies like Ikea even come to visit us and discover the way we work.
In early 2020 we decided to outsource the Social Media support to our external call centers, which was lucky, we suddenly had to manage huge volumes with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. We also extended the channels of support to Instagram, to adapt ourselves to our public. Even now, our customers like to interact with us, as shown by the NPS on support questions of more than +30 year over year.
2. Which elements did you implement as part of your digital solutions? Include details on the channels or tools you added, where you implemented AI or automation, and how your solution was unique.
In 2019, we launched our community, Tribe. In fact, it was our 2nd attempt to launch a forum. The 1st attempt did not turn out well, as the customers did not understand the goal of it and it quickly turned into a complaint page. Our 2nd attempt nearly went downhill too, as we had a great platform but no one to manage it. We quickly saw our metrics decreasing & a lack of interest. Our Customer Service team was convinced of the community’s need, and in turn, created the role of CSO Community Manager. The Community Manager was up to the challenge & together with a consultant, he managed to make the foundations right again, create a good looking structure, attract interest, and most importantly build a very close relationship with our Super Users, who are even publishing tips & tricks on our request to guide the customers on hot topics. The visits exploded during the Covid period and as a result, customers were helped without having to call us.
In 2020, we also decided to test out the support via chat. A few years before, we had to discontinue the contact via email, as it was much too expensive. Because of this, the customers did not have any alternative than to call us. The chat is now open on the contact pages of our website and already generates quite some volume, which is managed by the same agents as those who support on SoMed.
3. What specific results were you able to achieve? Please include key success metrics. (e.g. CSAT, call deflection, cost reduction, agent efficiency, response speed, resolution rate, etc.)
We still have many opportunities to grow here but our main focus is our hey! community. Hey! Telecom is our new digital brand launched in November 2021. As the brand is 100% digital, we needed to create a 100% digital support channel. We decided to use the chat & the chatbot of Khoros for this also. At the moment, it is only open on the website, but in a few months, we will launch our hey! app & the chat support will be integrated there too. The building of a chatbot is completely new to us, but we are learning fast, with help from the Khoros support team. We currently have about 80 dialogs and added our 1st totally integrated bot where it provides the PUK code (mobile unlocking code) to a customer, all while respecting the person’s privacy. About 25% of the conversations are managed by the bot without any human intervention, and we aim to increase this to 40%. Hey! allows us also to learn & gain in maturity, with an objective to develop the chatbot on Orange next year.
Finally, we launched our hey! community on 31/05, a disruptive community, based on the interactions and co-creation with the hey! customers. We are eager to discover where this challenge leads us to. 😉
When we want to try something, we add a layer, check out how it works, and adapt whenever needed. Yes, we want to be digital, but also respect the needs of our customers. Orange BE wants to be human digital. 😊