CX Network, one of the global leaders in premium content for customer experience professionals, recently announced the winners of the 2022 CX Elite Awards at InMoment’s Experience Forum.
The CX Elite Awards 2022 is a celebration of outstanding CX achievements over the past year.
The awards saw Sky Deutschland win Best Customer-Centric Culture for its new cross-site CX solution for internal and external customer service that puts the customer at the center of all decisions.
In this exclusive interview, CX Network talks with Oliver Viereck, managing director, customer care at Sky Deutschland to get his reaction on the award win.
CX Network: For years our research studies have found that introducing a customer-centric culture stands as one of the toughest CX challenges. How did you embark on building a customer-first focus at Sky?
Oliver Viereck: First and foremost, we intensively analyzed our customers' concerns and their satisfaction with our processing. To identify important correlations, we specifically evaluated the relevant data and verified it in discussions with our customer advisors and customer service leadership team.
Based on this, we then developed a clear vision: making every customer service experience brilliantly easy, regardless of the reason and the channel through which our customers contact us. We then set up a comprehensive program and derived the right measures to start improving customer service step by step. We are on a journey here that is not yet complete. At the same time, it already shows us that we can be very satisfied with what we have achieved so far. We now offer our customers a much better service experience than we did years ago and have been able to significantly increase the service Net Promoter Score (NPS) across all contact types.
However, it is not only the improved Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), but also the positive direct customer response that reaches us and shows us that the transformation was the right decision and our respective initiatives have come to fruition.
CX Network: Customer centricity involves brands completely changing their brand focus. What did you do to ease the transition from a product-based focus to a customer-based focus?
OV: From our experience, we can say that change is a longer journey that we are working on day by day. It is not so much a question of ‘product-based’ versus ‘customer-based’, but rather an awareness of pronounced customer orientation. After all, in order to make the right decisions in practice, a clear understanding of how things are received by the customer is needed in all areas, in addition to comprehensive product and process knowledge.
What is more, we live in a world where circumstances in the market can change very quickly. This demands a high level of adaptability from us. Agility is more important than ever, and that is not least a question of the right mindset.
CX Network: How can companies help non-customer-facing employees adopt a customer-centric culture?
OV: At Sky, every colleague is a part-time customer manager. Even employees from departments that do not have direct customer contact have a major impact on our customers’ decisions through their day-to-day work. For example, the colleagues from the IT department who work in the background every day to ensure that the systems of our customer advisors run smoothly at all locations.
To make everyone aware that they play an important role in the entire process and that we can only realize our vision together as a team, Sky runs a comprehensive employee program that brings all Sky employees even closer to the customer. Our Customer Closeness Program regularly sets all employees a task, gives them food for thought and tips for their everyday work, and therefore promotes customer-centric work in the long term.
CX Network: As part of your customer-centric culture, you introduced a Voice of the Customer (VOC) and Voice of the Employee (VOE) program. What tips would you give to companies looking to implement a similar program?
OV: In customer service, in addition to appropriate KPIs, it is important for us to always be close to the direct voice of the customer. Particularly in the management circle, we want to be able to see first-hand where the current challenges lie. So, we regularly listen to critical customer conversations in management rounds and discuss them together. We also have initiated Advisor Hours, in which our employees describe exactly where things need to be improved and what support they need to offer our customers the best possible service experience.
An increased service NPS is the result of improving many details. A prerequisite for this is a good database. Here we constantly look at important aspects both from the customer's point of view (e.g. friendliness and professional competence of employees) and from an internal point of view (e.g. accessibility, waiting and handling times). With the support of a good tool, it is possible to see exactly where we stand and where we need to start at any point in time.
These days, there is a wide range of systems on the market for this purpose. In addition to technical and functional aspects, it is important for us that our users’ new requirements can be implemented pragmatically and quickly without a major programming effort. This helps the system become a perfect match for our own customer service.