Service Design for the Telecom
Client (mock): Penguin Tele
Project Objective (mock): Canadians have said that they find the cost of cellphone services too high. The Government of Canada has asked telecoms providers to lower their prices and has taken steps to promote competition since 2017. A group of executives at Penguin Tele initiate a transformation project to better their services to stay competitive and top-of-mind.
Team (real): Eva Ng
Who’s involved?
1. list all potential stakeholders
investor, customer service operation (in-store and call center), marketing, third-party technician service provider, billing department, IT department, Designer, Content Strategist, customers, legal, process and policy writers
2. gather and have all invited stakeholders to start outlining their involvement and role in the project, then post them on the wall
3. discuss and debate each’s involvement, ownership, influence level, and dependency
4. Prioritize based on project needs
Who are the Customers?
Mary — the money saver — who recently saw an ad from Penguin Tele on its new trade-in promotion and hoping to get a better deal for the same services she is currently having with her provider.
John — the loyal tech savvy but not — who had been with Penguin Tele for a long time but recently had been increasingly feeling frustrated about its billing and confused about all the web log-in and apps that one has to check to understand the bills.
Penguin Tele’s initial assumption:
Penguin Tele thinks they have everything it needs from marketing collateral, web site, apps, paper invoice, and customer helpline, so the customers should have been satisfied and helped.
The actual problems customers have with Telecoms
(Industry-wide Desk Research):
- customers are constantly being charged when there were no services, making bill checking a tedious task
- for new customers or new add-on service opt-in, customers were simply given a “no” from the customer service representatives when they are having a wiring or other issues — not offering help or advances, yet money was charged despite services were disrupted or unable to deliver
- Customer Services on phone are rude, and customers are continuously being re-direct to other representatives who are not what they are looking for
So, which Customer Journey could have gone wrong with Penguin Tele?
- Customer’s Onboarding Journey:
When customers see the marketing ads about switching and phone trade-in promotion → becoming a customer → experiencing the phone service → interested to upgrade the package with TV and or Internet services as well → getting an installation service → re-connect with customer service for complaints or fill in satisfaction survey - Customer’s add-on Journey:
Checking bills as an existing customer → add or join a new additional service to their account → log in to their web account or app to check or use services → contact customer service
Service Audit #1 — Identify the Journey touchpoints:
People:
(front stage) customer service in person or on the phone, a sales rep in-store or at promotion, service installation technician
(back stage) IT, marketers, HR, department head, policymaker
Objects:
(physical) poster, price sheets, paper bill statements
(digital) website screens, web log-in account, mobile app, chatbot, survey
Environment :
website speed, chatbot fluidity, phone call customer service environment, post log-in (web and app), in-store, and buildings
Policy:
employee rules, code of conduct, organization chart
Procedure/Process:
when and how to hand-off or sign-off, decision-tree on decision making and how communication happened between colleagues or department
Service Audit #2 — Consolidate The Service Issues:
The Current State of both Journey:
The Ideal State of both Journey:
The value provided to customers:
- Through connected, informed, and valued services to provide reliability and big time-saving for customers.
Stakeholder re-mapping to fit the changed prototyping priority:
Ideally, operation and tracking departments have higher stakes at this stage since a high level of commitment on testing prototype and gathering feedback is critical
The first prototype:
Quick win solution — provide customer service script to the technicians for the basic manner and guide for parking and customer safety as the minimum viable service:
Multi-tracking and iterative:
Be iterative to learn and implement more customer-centric long term solutions such as having a content strategy for bill and usage statements, provide real-time handheld customer and neighborhood info for technicians as a customer service, rework UX of marketing website, post log-in, and app, provide fine prints training to sale and customer services staffs, and offer customers pre-installation guidance booklet or access to learn about best practices and what to watch out for to complete a journey design.
Sufficient services will bring Penguin Tele customer loyalty and high customer performance score.
Also, during testings, we can use a consistent set of questions to learn the impact the service had made on participated customers to collect quantitative and qualitative results as KPIs for service measuring.
Reflection:
If it is not a mock project, I would like to conduct in-depth customer research to understand their real needs, experience, and life stage. Also, conduct a well thought out competitor learning exercise.
Last word:
Appendix :
“We are pleased to see that prices for cellphone plans for many Canadians have declined… We remain focused on providing high-quality, affordable telecommunications services to all Canadians [throught regulation and government interruption].”
– The Honourable Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development of Canada
