Spark New Zealand takes a digital-first approach to omnichannel services

Who: Spark New Zealand

What: The operator wanted to unify customer experience, providing a digital-first solution for customers and internal staff whatever the channel being used.

How: Used the Blue Marble modular suite of business support system (BSS) products and services built by Comviva, and systems integration services from Tech Mahindra.

Results:

• Net promoter score (NPS) doubled in just three years
• 20% year on year reduction in call center volumes
• Customer self-service adoption increased by 30%
• Training of customer advisors reduced from three weeks to 10 days.

A unified customer experience across channels

There is nothing new about omnichannel customer service. But very few communications service providers (CSPs) have effectively delivered on a strategy for creating a unified, converged customer experience – one which is designed to accelerate the transition to digital channels while ensuring that contact center and retail staff get access to the same functionalities as end users and can participate in their digital journeys.

New Zealand’s largest digital services provider, Spark, formulated its strategy for creating a “unified digital frontline” (UDFL) experience back in 2020. The CSP chose the Blue Marble modular suite of business support system (BSS) products and services built by Comviva and global systems integration firm Tech Mahindra to deliver the solution and transformation.

Rather than thinking of digital as a vertical silo sitting alongside retail and call centers, Spark’s vision required the deployment of horizontal capabilities to ensure that the customer experience was the same whatever channel was being used.

" When we see what a customer is trying to do, they’re trying to buy something, they’re trying to service their account, or they’re looking for help and support,” says Tessa Tierney, Product and Technology Director at Spark. “I want each of those interactions to be through the same platform. Whether you’re talking to us, or whether you’re talking to us through a system, a digital experience, I want it to be unified. I want it to be one single thing.”

From a customer perspective it was pretty clear to Spark where it was falling short. The customer relationship management (CRM) systems used by retail and call center staff were so complex and fragmented that customers typically experienced painfully slow resolutions to their enquiries. “From an internal point of view we had to triage 13 different screens to perform just one action for a customer,” says Tierney. As a result, customers could be kept waiting five to seven minutes for the customer service agent to resolve a query.

The complexity of Spark’s internal systems also created inefficiencies. The systems in place demanded extensive and substantial training, with advisors taking more than nine months to reach competency. Furthermore, with differing advisor and customer journeys, errors inevitably occurred resulting in additional time spent supporting customers. This frustrated both the advisors navigating the complex systems and customers who received poor experiences as a result, contributing to an increase in complaints and negatively impacting Spark’s customer experience scores.

Bringing together digital and physical journeys

Spark based its digital experience strategy around customer journeys. But the challenge it faced in building its UDFL was how to insert its call agents into these journeys. Doing so was essential if Spark was to realize its vision of giving its call center agents full visibility of different customer journeys and to allow them to be fully integrated into them.

The solution that Spark came up with involved decomposing its Siebel CRM system and finding a partner that could assist with federating and simplifying its product catalogs in order to be able to modernize some of its back-end systems. Its strategy was also shaped by a desire to become a digital ecosystem player and resell third-party products and services.

The transformation program was far from straightforward. “It was a pretty bumpy journey that took us over two years to create both this front end experience for our customers and for our people and swapping out and consolidating our product catalogs,” says Tierney. As part of Spark’s partnership with Comviva it also acquired a number of digital ecosystem and e-commerce products and solutions.

The project involved the creation of a number of different foundational elements of a UDFL. This included: the establishment of a common identity; integration of a new product catalog and e-commerce application; building on personalization and campaign integration; a digital design system; and extending its data and analytics. Spark’s work on these UDFL foundational elements was supported by new product constructs, the removal of duplication, continuous delivery, the development of journeys as products, new ways of working for frontline advisors, and finally migration away from legacy systems and processes.

The end goal for the project was to establish a so-called “Shadow Mode” experience for its call center agents. Implemented in early 2021, Shadow Mode empowers frontline advisors to navigate and fulfil customer online journeys faster and seamlessly. This has eliminated the need for agents to grapple with complex internal CRM journeys, reducing clicks and streamlining the overall customer service experience.

A new approach to partnering

As telecoms operators seek to wrest control of their technology roadmaps from their vendors, relationships between the two partners necessarily evolve. Spark was committed to doing its own systems integration and having a core set of people who understood its IP.

“We always want to play the role of systems integrator,” says Tierney. “We don’t want to outsource the ultimate outcome of how our architecture works, we want to play that role ourselves.”

That is not to say that Spark managed its transformation without the hands-on assistance of Tech Mahindra and Comviva teams. Indeed, having experts who worked, for example, with other customers that bought and integrated the same systems was absolutely vital.

The two sides managed to achieve this even during Covid-19 when the New Zealand government imposed one of the toughest travel bans anywhere in the world. Spark, for example, had to gain special dispensation from the government to allow a limited number of Tech Mahindra consultants to enter into the country.

The two key roles that Spark asked Tech Mahindra to play were: a) helping the organization to expand its resources during the duration of the project; and b) bringing in global expertise. For the second of these requirements Comviva and Tech Mahindra assembled a collection of operator customers and partners that were able to share stories about their transformation journeys.

Measuring the benefits

Spark has derived both efficiency and customer experience gains through the deployment of Shadow Mode and from UDFL more broadly. Building digital- first journeys for all Spark’s products and services has shifted the focus from improving internal systems to streamlining online journeys.

The process of training customer advisors has been reduced from three weeks to 10 days. With advisors making fewer mistakes and identifying and rectifying friction points more quickly, Spark has been able to deliver an improved experience to its customers.

The transformation has allowed Spark to give its call agents the opportunity to evolve from being problem solvers and fire fighters to becoming advocates and sales agents. Transitioning to a single catalog and single business rules has also allowed Spark to accelerate time to market for new products and price plans (Spark has completed its transformation to a single catalog in mobile and is “halfway there” with broadband).

Spark’s net promoter score (NPS) also improved significantly over the period during which Tech Mahindra was deploying the Comviva Blue Marble solution. It now sits at more than 40, which is more than two times higher than it was three years ago.

Next steps: harnessing AI

Spark’s next focus, when it comes to driving efficiencies in its CRM systems, involves the use of AI to enable the automation of systems and processes. Some of these benefits are already coming through with the deployment of the new Blue Marble systems. “We used to have people sitting down and thinking about offers for personas, but now we have AI throwing up thousands of offers every day,” says Tierney.

The next phase in Spark’s AI journey will involve using generative AI (GenAI), and it has already identified five families of use cases:

Consumer channels. Customers’ usage of call centers currently represents the highest-cost channel for Spark, but with GenAI this may change. Rather than trying to force customers to use digital channels Spark wants them to explore the potential for them to speak directly to a GenAI chatbot.

Data augmentation. This involves the use of GenAI to collect and deliver information (about customers) from different knowledge bases.

B2B service operations. The potential benefits in B2B are very similar to those that Spark has benefitted from in the consumer segment.

Document search. The focus here is efficiency and productivity gains for internal IT and operations teams.