Restoring Customer Advocacy With a Digital-First Approach

A large European telco hemmed in by traditional service channels needed to modernize its business—or risk losing more customers. They sought our help developing a more seamless, interactive customer experience. We delivered a five-year roadmap to achieve this, boosting customer advocacy and digital experiences and sales just one year into the engagement.

Internet and TV, key drivers of regional market growth, were weak spots for CableCo*. The company was not meeting customers’ expectations for functionality, reliability, and speed. And the impact—customer churn that was higher than competitors’, declining market share, and a disappointing customer Net Promoter Score^SM of -15—all pointed to one critical blind spot: digital capabilities. 

We collaboratively embarked on a Telco Customer Experience Transformation to make CableCo a customer-centric, digital-first enterprise. User surveys revealed a significant opportunity to improve service personalization, products, and interaction through digital channels. This feedback helped us focus on key actions, including creating simplified, personalized, and digitalized customer journeys; embedding digital capabilities in all physical channels; and setting up agile ways of working across business and IT functions. 

Our most critical priority was to articulate a shared vision of success: less churn, increased digital sales, and an ambitious 40-point increase in both customer and employee NPS^®. Reaching these goals required a structured framework, complete with squads of employees focusing on marketing, customer journeys, channels, IT, and other priority areas. Using an agile approach to accelerate time to market, these groups took ownership of specific capabilities and products aimed at improving the customer experience. 

Our ability to clearly prioritize key actions, along with a superior grasp of customer advocacy—and a proven mechanism for measuring and improving it—differentiated our approach. Within two years the company saw digital sales and customer care interactions improve and NPS scores rise 26 points, indicating that it was both loved by customers and well on its way to becoming a digital-first omnichannel player. The momentum continues: By 2024, we project our client will achieve 17% operating free cash flow (OFCF) uplift driven by improved gross adds, lower churn, and reduced cost (opex). Bolstered by a proven, actionable framework, CableCo is well positioned to compete in a fast-changing market—now and into the future. 

*We take our clients’ confidentiality seriously. While we’ve changed their names, the results are real.