Speed up your fibre network sales process and improve customer service

Leverage Salesforce CRM to accelerate fibre rollout by 40%

The demand for broadband internet has increased the pace of fibre network deployments across the connectedness industry. In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated digital adoption, and the value consumers and businesses place on fibre broadband connectivity. The increasing demand for fibre networks and favourable government policies attract a wave of external investment, creating a fibre gold rush. However, releasing fibre connectivity services faster in a highly competitive environment is crucial to remain relevant.

Today, customers expect simple and digital-first journeys where interaction with the call centre or retail agent is seamless across all channels such as phone, web, email, mobile app, live chat, etc. However, the below challenges hinder service providers from delivering a superior customer experience.

• Multiple legacies and siloed systems resulting in inefficiencies for the care agents
• Multiple shadow IT systems requiring constant manual interventions are not flexible to accommodate changing customer needs
• Long release cycles due to complex back-end processes

To overcome the above challenges, service providers must adopt a single unified CRM platform. Salesforce CRM is an extremely powerful platform that provides loads of out-of-the-box solutions such as Sales Cloud, Marketing Cloud, and Service Cloud. But to reap the maximum benefits, service providers must focus on the right transformation enablers. This includes using Salesforce’s Open APIs, low-code capabilities, Omni Supervisor features, and automation of case assignments to deliver a superior customer experience. With the help of these enablers, service providers can effectively connect all the dots for integrating customer data, removing data silos, and transforming the digital experience for their fibre customers.

Implementing the critical transformation enablers to accelerate delivery of fiber network, resulting in superior customer experience

Service providers can get the best value from the Salesforce platform and accelerate the fiber network delivery using three transformation enablers: Sales Cloud, Marketing Cloud, and Service Cloud.

Fig: Transformation enablers to accelerating fibre network delivery

1. Achieve a zero-touch E2E journey through seamless integration with backend systems and increase operational efficiency

Salesforce CRM offers a single system to manage the E2E customer journey. As Salesforce CRM fully integrates with the backend systems, it allows users to drive the business effectively and deliver customer value.

Recommendations

• Define each journey step from the first interaction to customer engagement to service delivery. Use Salesforce Lightning Flows to map the entire journey and automate repetitive tasks
• Automate sending/receiving information to third-party systems using Salesforce Open APIs to avoid manual interventions
• Leverage Salesforce Case Management to create tasks and actions for the team members to ensure timely delivery of the work
• Use Salesforce Lead Management and Campaign Management modules to acquire new customers with new offerings/promotions
• Perform data migration from legacy systems to Salesforce using an inbuilt adaptor, ‘Data Loader.’ It migrates data using excel files into Salesforce without any custom logic or customization
• Integrate with build workflow and provide updates to customers using the configured and dynamic Salesforce Email templates powered by OOTB Email Services to avoid manual intervention and to provide consistent messages

Fig: Sales Cloud-based sales flow

2. Build system intelligence to automate proactive identification of critical cases and keep the customer informed about its progress at every touchpoint

In a legacy system, complaints raised via different channels are processed in disparate systems, leading to inefficiency and poor customer experience. To resolve each issue, the agents must work across multiple systems causing high TAT and a backlog of work. Any customer complaint or query is routed to Salesforce, where the teams pick them up, troubleshoot and resolve them, and, in the journey, keep the customer fully engaged.

Fig: Marketing Cloud

Recommendations

• Analyze the number of systems the team needs to address a customer complaint. Use Salesforce Open APIs and Web services to connect them. Provide 1 system with all the required inputs
• Use Marketing Cloud Journey Builder to define the KPIs. Keep your customers informed at every stage of the way
• Use Marketing Cloud Email Studio to generate dynamic templates with branding and customization
• Leverage Marketing Cloud Mobile Studio to send customized SMS to customers and target audience
• Improve customer experience by generating 1:1 personalized emails on Marketing Cloud
• Use out-of-the-boxpre-built themes and templates provided with Marketing cloud for quick setup
• Use Salesforce Forms as a link on the websites to get the customer complaints directly in the CRM
• Use intelligent work monitoring to automatically identify the orders with critical issues and flag them to the team for action
• Use Salesforce workflows, process builders, and flows to define business logic and setup an automated process to identify the business area and the team for assigning the task
• Use Salesforce Entitlement and Milestone modules to set up the SLA tracking function and ensure the desired level of customer service

3. Automate service prioritization and allocate tasks to the right team using Salesforce’s Omnichannel routing capability to improve operational efficiency

Omnichannel is a console-based feature that automatically routes different action items to the teams based on the team’s capacity, priority, skillset, etc. Salesforce Service Cloud automatically prioritizes the service dates and allocates the action items to the right team without requiring manual intervention.

Fig: Omnichannel enablement using Salesforce Service Cloud

Recommendations

• Identify the different channels via which customer communications can happen. Use Salesforce Email to Case, Web to Case, and CTI Plugin to configure these channels
• Identify all the possible touchpoints in the journey requiring specific agent support. Leverage Salesforce Skill based work assignments to allocate work to the right agent who has the skill set to complete the job effectively
• Configure your teams as Salesforce Queues to allocate the work effectively
• Use Salesforce Omnichannel configuration to define the effective workload an agent should receive at any point in time
• Leverage the Omni Supervisor feature to monitor the overall work backlog and current work capacity and assign agents to different areas in real time to better manage the overall operations
• Define the business logic to prioritize the most crucial work Salesforce Omnichannel Secondary Priority routing can help identify the critical work and expedite them first
• Use AI and chatbots to handle routine issues, as customers expect 24/7 prompt services

By embracing these transformation enablers, service providers can accelerate the delivery of fibre networks by 40-45%, reduce the number of legacy systems by 30%, and achieve a 240K+ reduction in customer calls/ complaints per year.

I thank my colleagues Manish Gupta and Rohit Karthikeyan for contributing to building this article.

Author

Narendar Ramachandrudu
Assistant Vice President - Prodapt Solutions
Narendar is a hands-on technology leader with 25 years of track record in interacting with stakeholders to design pivotal solutions and seamless delivery management across Salesforce CRM, BPM, EAI & ERP. Narendar’s industry experience includes Telecom, Aerospace, Energy, Logistics, Automotive, and Insurance. Narendar has 10 Years of Architectural and Delivery capability in Salesforce CRM Covering Communication Cloud, Sales, Service, FSL, Chatbots & Force.com.

Narendar is an Assistant Vice President at Prodapt, a two-decade-old consulting & managed services provider with a singular focus on the connectedness industry. Prodapt’s customers range from telecom operators, digital/multi-service providers (D/MSPs), technology, and digital platform companies in the business of connectedness. Prodapt builds, integrates, and operates solutions enabling software-intensive networks. Prodapt works with global leaders including AT&T, Verizon, Lumen, Adtran, Vodafone, Liberty Global, Rogers, Deutsche Telekom, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft among many others.

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