Client
Telenor
On the Web
www.telenor.com Project
Helping Customers to Help Themselves
Executive Summary
The "eChannel", the telecom company's new customer portal,
provides personalized information about the services available and for
enquiries about their accounts. It has proven very popular with customers, who
are now more likely to use it than to call for assistance.
Telenor is already famous for its innovative products and
customer services, so why did this Norwegian giant, a global provider of
broadband, TV, satellite and mobile services, feel that it needed a new
Internet portal for its customers? The main motivation was that Norway's
technologically sophisticated consumers tend to feel very comfortable using the
Internet to interact with companies. By enabling its customers to get a wide
range of new and personalized services online, including special offers, recent
statements, and the ability to pay bills, Telenor has cut call-centre traffic
by 10 to 20 percent—reducing its cost base while improving customer loyalty and
satisfaction.
This new customer portal, the eChannel, provides customers
with an alternative to Telenor's call-centre when they need personalized
information about the services available to them or to make enquiries about
their accounts. The call center was very effective in providing access to some
of Telenor's core services, but as Frode Stodal, manager of eChannel, says, "We
needed to find a more cost-efficient, personalized service that offered
customers any service they needed, at any time". The new system's popularity is
such that Telenor has recorded a significant rise in the number of people
logging on to its Internet sites because, as Arild Hermansen, the project
manager, says: "This type of automation is popular with customers—it is more
accurate, faster and cheaper".
The eChannel initiative has been based on using an
innovative approach to prioritize Telenor's customers, working closely with
them and other external partners. Telenor felt it was vital to bring the new
customer portal to market as quickly and effectively as possible, and so was
one of the first companies to use Microsoft .NET technology and Web Services.
This new technology enabled the portal's 200 personalized pages to be up and
running within three months—much faster than if Telenor had attempted to
construct the entire service from scratch. The solution is also flexible enough
to develop with future strategy, making it easy and economical for Telenor to
integrate with its partners' websites and share information with them.
One of the greatest benefits of the eChannel is that it
allows Telenor to have greater access to the information which shows what its
customers want and to tailor products and services accordingly, as well as
providing a better way for customers to access and pay for these services when
they become available. As Stodal says,"Whenever you want information, you can
get it. We are playing a game in which you, the customer, make the rules".
The eChannel has proven very popular with Telenor's
customers. Customer behavior is changing over time and they are now more likely
to turn to the Internet to answer their queries than to call Telenor for
assistance, which is unique in the industry. More importantly, the company's
relationship with its customers is becoming closer and much stronger. Telenor
is already planning the next stage of this new strategy, as Stoldal explains:
"Inspired by the success of eChannel, we are looking at new ways of doing
business and interacting with customers".
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