SmarTone delivers unparalleled user experiences with innovative technology adoption

SmarTone leads the way with 5G technology
As the leading mobile network operator in Hong Kong, SmarTone Telecommunications Holdings (SmarTone) is paving the way for 5G in the market because of its commitment to delivering an outstanding network experience to customers, continuous product innovation, and seamless user experiences, backed by digital workflows.

SmarTone, a subsidiary of property developer Sun Hung Kai Properties, provides voice, multimedia, and mobile broadband services, as well as fixed-fibre broadband services, to consumers and corporations. SmarTone aims to deliver “unbeatable and valuable experiences” for its customers.

SmarTone sets its sights toward future innovation with expanded and diversified solutions
“We are broadening our services from conventional telecommunications to a wide range of information and communications technology (ICT) solutions,” says Daniel Leung, Head of Business Markets at SmarTone. “To cope with changing demands, we need to expand and diversify our solutions.”

These new solutions include complex offerings that integrate fixed, mobile, and WiFi networks, such as complex public event WiFi solutions; industry-specific applications such as SmartHotel and SmartBuilding solutions; and cybersecurity products and services, such as risk threat assessment consultancy and end-point detection and response.

As SmarTone continues to diversify and expand its services, the organisation also had to address the growing demand on its customer service teams. These teams increasingly had to provision new services, resolve low-level incidents and problems, and complete repetitive—rather than managing more complex service issues.

As a frontrunner in delivering new applications and capabilities, SmarTone had to ensure its operations were future-proof too. “At least 20% to 25% more work is generated from customer use of these new solutions,” says Leung.

Realising that more is not always better, SmartTone looks to improve ways of working
“We realised we could not maintain customer service levels simply by adding more people to our teams,” adds Leung. “Without productivity improvements, we would have had to increase the number of people by 20%.”

“This would increase our human resources costs and the workload of our internal management. We needed to empower our existing teams to complete higher-value activities while removing as much of the administrative work from them as possible,” continues Leung. “Perhaps most importantly, we need to reduce the time customer service team members spent on repetitive administrative tasks would boost morale and reduce attrition.”

SmarTone sought to make work better for its people by building a productive, efficient, and work-smart way of operating to support the fast and agile introduction of new, innovative services.

With ServiceNow, SmarTone automates and digitises its workflows
SmarTone decided to automate and digitise workflows for its more administrative activities, such as service provisioning, and to enable customers to complete many administrative tasks themselves using self-service capabilities.

The provider conducted an evaluation that encompassed building its own customer service management system or deploying a SaaS (software-as-a-service) product from a vendor. 

Leung continues, “In addition, we would be able to implement and start achieving benefits quickly–a key criteria for the project.”

SmarTone took a phased approach to ensure the customer service team and project team would reap the initial rewards of the deployment. The provider completed the first phase–deployment of ServiceNow App Engine–after nine months of development and the second and third phases–deployment of ServiceNow Customer Service Management modules–following another nine-month development stage.

SmarTone supports hundreds of business users and is positioned to compete in a highly competitive market
Two years into the deployment, the largest of SmarTone’s thousands of corporate and business customers are using the portal. The provider’s sales and customer service teams–comprising about 120 employees–are the key internal users. Usage from customers and internal staff is in the range of 1,000 to 2,000 requests per month and continues to increase.

With ServiceNow, SmarTone is ideally positioned to compete in a market segment that demands excellent, responsive customer service, technology leadership, and constant innovation. “We improved the experience and satisfaction of our customers by delivering faster and consistent high-quality customer service,” says Leung. “In addition, we now have an edge over other telecommunications providers that run primarily manual support and processes.”

SmarTone sees clear results with higher employee satisfaction levels
Leung has observed that employees are happier in their work, and frontline employee attrition levels have fallen by 50% since the implementation of ServiceNow. In addition, the lead time to generate customer reports has fallen from a couple of days to a few minutes.

Furthermore, the customer service team is spending more time on activities that generate revenue for the business. “I would estimate the ‘ServiceNow effect’ removes more than 20% of our previous administrative work,” says Leung.

“We hope 80% of administrative tasks can be completed through the Now Platform in three years’ time, while customer adaptability is an important factor we can continue to work on,” he adds.

With SmarTone well established as a leading user of advanced technologies, the provider is well positioned to expand further into ICT. It has already selected ServiceNow to provide service and support for a range of new ICT lines, including solutions that match up to new smart city initiatives driven by government and business and solutions enabled by 5G, such as advanced fixed wireless access and massive IoT connectivity.

“Two years into our deployment of ServiceNow, we are continuing to expand its scope and add new functionality,” says Leung. “We regard ServiceNow as key to executing our vision of telecommunications and ICT leadership in Hong Kong.”

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