STC rapidly adapts to deliver “new normal” digital experience

Who: Saudi Telecom Company and Huawei Technologies

What: STC’s Corporate Customer Experience Management program enabled the operator to overcome pandemic-related challenges and quickly meet changing customer needs in unprecedented circumstances.

How: Leveraged TM Forum’s Business Process Framework, Information Framework, Open APIs, and best practice toolkits to create a 360-view of STC customers and adopt a customer-centric approach.

Results: Dramatically higher use of digital channels among customers; better engagement with customers via new Digital Community; 10.6% ARPU uplift; 15-point improvement in Net Promoter Score and 14% increase in STC’s brand value.

When the coronavirus pandemic escalated in 2020, telecom operators were under pressure to keep people, businesses, government and health services connected while pivoting to remote working and protecting their own employees, many of whom were essential frontline workers. For Saudi Telecom Company (STC), the largest operator in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the pandemic raised many challenges that threatened to impact sales, customer service and its brand.

With international travel restrictions, the operator suddenly faced a significant shortfall in roaming revenue. The annual Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca attracts millions of visitors, most of whom use STC’s network, for example.

National lockdown measures meant that STC had to close its retail shops, which blocked its primary sales and service channel and hindered brand engagement with customers and local communities. The operator needed new ways to strengthen brand loyalty and serve its geographically dispersed and culturally unique customer base.

Customer requirements and behavior changed almost overnight and STC needed to adapt quickly to understand subscribers’ new needs. Working from home blurred the distinction between enterprise and consumer behaviors, which posed a customer experience dilemma and potentially lower service revenue.

Building on digital customer experience foundations

In partnership with Huawei, STC launched a major digital customer experience transformation program, called Corporate Customer Experience Management (CCEx), which began in 2019 and created the foundation for improving digital customer experience.

CCEx is a significant initiative that is overseen by the office of the Group CEO. It establishes a unified approach to customer experience measurement across the STC Group. At the heart of CCEx is Huawei’s SmartCare platform, comprising customer experience management, network performance management and service quality management. Leveraging TM Forum’s Business Process Framework (eTOM) to scope the project and the Customer Experience Maturity Model and toolkit to define capabilities, CCEx provides a 360-degree view of the customer and fosters a customer-centric culture at STC.

Previously, each of STC’s consumer, enterprise and wholesale business units operated in silos and in inconsistent ways. The operator wanted standard definitions and metrics across the units and a holistic customer view. Working with Huawei, STC established a unified model for customer lifecycle and certified some 178 customer journeys across all touchpoints, based on TM Forum’s Lifecycle Metrics standard. The project also relied on TM Forum’s Information Framework (SID) and Open APIs, for example to enhance the mySTC application with digital enablers.

In addition, TM Forum’s Digital Maturity Model was used to define revenue assurance and ecosystem assurance best practices and operating procedures. The AI Maturity Model was used to guide the expansion of the customer personas developed by STC, which enabled integration with the mySTC app and new Digital Community.

Customer experience targets exceeded

Based on a myriad of customer metrics across three areas, broadly defined as “engaging”, “using”, and “evaluating”, Huawei developed a Customer Experience Index (CEI) along with a dashboard to monitor changes and analytics to understand customer perception and business outcomes and then recommend actions.

STC's Corporate CEx (CCEx) Objectives & Model

At the end of 2020, despite all the pandemic-related challenges, STC excelled at improving digital customer experience and exceeded CEI targets in all three business units. In consumer, the CEI reached 84.14% surpassing the target of 80.1%; in enterprise, the CEI was 85.43% and the target was 81.4%; and in wholesale, the CEI was 85.94% while the target was 80.7%.

Source: STC

The continual customer experience monitoring and insights provided by the platform were key factors in helping STC to grow average revenue per user (ARPU), increase the use of digital channels and improve its Net Promoter Score (NPS) and brand value.

At the end of 2020, STC mobile ARPU had increased by 10.6% compared to the end of 2019, according to the GSMA. The operator’s NPS rose from -20 in 2019 to -5 in 2020 and its customer churn rate improved to be one of the best in the region, according to Analysys Mason.

STC is Saudi Arabia’s strongest brand, with a Brand Strength Index (BSI) score of 83.9 out of 100 and it celebrated an impressive 14% increase in brand value to US$9.2 billion, according to Brand Finance.

Digitally adapting for the “new normal”

STC promoted the use of digital channels through digital awareness campaigns and expanded the number of things customers could do via digital channels, including new service sales, upgrades, add-ons, customer support, and trouble ticket resolution. It also adjusted incentive schemes and commissions to support digital sales. According to STC’s 2020 annual report, 100% of sales in main cities and more than 70% countrywide came from the mySTC app.

STC also introduced novel ways to connect with customers through a new Digital Community (DC), which brings together customers and employees to share tips and experiences as well as crowdsource troubleshooting. The new initiative not only improved customer experience and satisfaction, but also instilled a more customer-centric ethos among employees and the whole culture of STC Group.

The DC allows STC’s more than 20,000 employees to become ambassadors for the company and hear directly from customers, friends and family about their actual experiences with services. “We’re bringing together the voices of customers, employees and our processes to define the customer journey experience,” said Mohammed AlSalim, GM of CCEx Strategy & Assurance at STC.

Huawei and STC extended the existing customer experience platform to accommodate all DC-related aspects, integrating it with OSS and BSS as well as with social media channels for instant feedback.

“Now that we can really measure the digital experience and have end-to-end 360-visibility of customer experience, we can use the modeling, assurance, tools and predictive analytics to prioritize and continue improving the KPIs and to develop new products and services that fully deliver exactly what our customers are looking for,” said Yahya AlGhaihab, GM of CCEx platform management at STC.

Huawei’s SmartCare platform is designed to adapt to rapid changes in customer experience and the customer journeys were enhanced to reflect the “new normal”. This capability enables STC to deliver relevant services, which was critical when the pandemic changed so much for consumers and businesses.

For example, using insights from the customer experience platform and the CEI, STC developed and improved its Jawwy TV application and service and grew its customer base.

Source: STC

Source: STC

STC was able to act quickly to support its more than 20 million mobile subscribers and over 6 million fixed subscribers who were working from home by offering consumers extra data and discounted prices for their employers via digital channels, for example. The use of CEI enabled STC to develop tailored offerings based on experience, customer segments, usage and individual characteristics.

These efforts led to more customer engagement and greater participation in STC’s loyalty program for small- and medium-size enterprises (SMEs). From January 2020 to June 2021, the number of SMEs enrolled in the program increased by 51% to 32,604.

Next Steps for CCEx

The successful program is delivering improvements in a short time and enabling STC to adapt to changes in customer demand caused by the pandemic. The next steps are to continue expanding the implementation across the STC Group, going beyond the telecom operations in the Middle East and North Africa region to include the company’s cloud, digital media and financial technology (stc pay) subsidiaries.