aditya modi
Head, Analyst Relations and Thought Leadership Marketing, Edgeverve Systems Limited
Supernova Award Category
The Problem
In 2014, Vodafone NZ decided to embark on a journey to simplify their customer facing processes to deliver a superior customer experience.
The key challenge was the complex and unwieldy technology landscape which made it difficult for them to introduce customer centricity across Mobile and Fixedline processes – It was difficult for Vodafone to get a single view of customer given all the disparate technology systems (a result of organic evolution and acquisitions).
Vodafone leveraged EdgeVerve’s “AssistEdge” product to orchestrate the backend IT systems non-intrusively, which effectively created a buffer between the process layer and IT systems layer. This allowed Vodafone to reimagine, re-engineer and simplify end-to-end customer processes without depending on process and IT system changes.
At Vodafone, the product is fondly called “OneView”.
https://www.edgeverve.com/customers/clients-speak/Pages/customer-experie...
Vodafone believes this ability to change quickly can be a significant competitive advantage in their markets – and has since been leveraging this solution to redesign and deploy several new and improved processes.
The Solution
Vodafone NZ has a very complex IT system landscape due to organic evolution and acquisitions over a period of time. There were three separate system stacks (on three different technologies) for different product portfolios. This resulted in several operational challenges as Vodafone was unable to aggregate all the information about the customer holding different products (and being stored in different system stacks) in a meaningful way. This made handling customer queries highly inefficient (with calls being transferred across multiple groups and several call backs required to resolve a particular issue).
For Vodafone, a fragmented picture about the customer also meant inability to leverage Up-sell / Cross-sell opportunities.
AssistEdge was chosen as platform to address the problem of seamlessly aggregating the separate technology stacks. AssistEdge non-intrusively aggregates information from multiple disparate technology applications into a single unified front-end solution.
The results
The result of “OneView” – Superior customer experience for Vodafone’s end customers is reflected in all-round improvement in a range of key metrics like NPS scores, reduction in repeat calls and escalated complaints and quicker order to fulfilment cycles.
More importantly, employees of Vodafone believe that the OneView system has enabled them to deliver outstanding customer experience as is evident in the quotes below.
It is quicker:
“Everything I need is together in one place – one login, once a day.”
“I can search across all systems for my customer in one go.”
It is easier:
“It’s easy to talk to the customer – because everything I need is right in front of me.”
“It guides me through what to do next and what to tell the customer.”
It is more accurate:
“I feel confident in what I’m telling the customer – I have trust that the information is correct”
“The system automatically updates other applications – less copying and pasting”
I get access to new tools
“I get to use some cool new tools that help me give accurate”
“Information about the customer’s address and I can now email the customer to confirm what they’ve ordered and what happens next”
“Everything OneView is doing, it’s making our job so much easier. It’s saving so much time.”
“We are getting more time to talk with the customer”
Metrics
Implementing the “OneView” solution enabled by AssistEdge has resulted in following improvements:
1. Positive turnaround of Touchpoint NPS metrics for key processes – standouts being 47 basis points improvement across the teams interacting with customers to “Moving House” & 42 basis points improvement across the teams interacting with customers to “Resolve Technical” issues with their voice & broadband connection.2. Significant reduction in Average Handling Time for key processes which were enabled through OneView, most process experiencing 25-40% reductions – standout being a highly agent intensive “Move House” location on one IT stack delivering a 73% reduction due to the information aggregation and process redesign steps trigger via AssistEdge.3. Steep reduction in escalated complaints – standout being a 80%+ reduction in Standard Fixed installations4. Faster order to fulfilment cycles leading to quicker revenue realisation – Gross-to-Net activations for Fixed orders lifted by 12 basis points to near 100%.
The Technology
Our product AssistEdge (https://www.edgeverve.com/assistedge/) is the first customer service product for contact centers that delivers an integrated cross channel experience
AssistEdge allows for “non-intrusive” integration with disparate technologies coupled with User Experience Dashboard which is completely customisable – this allowed the program to quickly redesign processes without being delayed by IT system changes.
Disruptive Factor
The Vodafone New Zealand stakeholders wanted EdgeVerve to prove the capability quickly and then productionise the capability.
AssistEdge team took up this challenge in 4 steps –
1.The “Mock up” prototype was developed within 1 week2. Post this, a full-fledged proof of concept was done with AssistEdge – implementing a core operational process which integrated and extracted information from 8 different Vodafone applications – this was implemented within a record 6 weeks3. Subsequently, a joint program, team referred to as OneTeam was established comprising of staff from Vodafone business, IT, user community and EdgeVerve. This team collaborates and works together to deploy AssistEdge from “Idea” to “Go-Live” using rapid visual prototyping and iterative delivery. Vodafone internal refers to this as “OneView is deliver through OneTeam”
A.The first release of AssistEdge was completed in 7 weeks and rolled out to 500 users.
B. We follow the best practice of “Finalizing the user Interface for process at start of development”
We strategized a two pronged approach (Specific Methodologies and Generic Methodologies) to achieve project excellence and innovation.
Specific Methodologies – Customize User Interface and Dashboard screens
Vodafone automation and dashboard requirement were unique and hence we designed a range of linked dashboards and did “step-by-step” process automations matches.
Shining Moment
Vodafone NZ is extremely pleased with AssistEdge and acknowledges AssistEdge's utility in completely transforming and redesigning their customer experience processes.