A1 Telekom delivers exceptional customer service to citizens

Leading a rapidly evolving industry
Modern communications support every aspect of our daily lives; it’s impressive to think about what’s been achieved in the last 50 years alone. However, its growth hasn’t kept up with our technological demands. “Just consider what I can configure for myself in my phone”, says Robert Eder, Director of ICT Services at A1 Telekom Austria. “If you think about what’s possible in other industries, the telecommunications sector still has some way to go, particularly if we think about self-service for customers and a rapid response from the company.”

Robert understands the industry better than most. A1 Telekom is a market leader in IT and telecoms business, combining 5G networks, 65,000 km of fibre-optic networks, and ICT to create end-to-end solutions for 29 million customers across seven countries, with more than seven million in Austria alone. It plays a central role in the country’s economy, working for citizens, businesses, government and public service organisations.

Martin Resel, COO Enterprise at A1, says: “We take responsibility for Austria and Austrian people. We are part of the country’s critical infrastructure. The most important data from the Austrian authorities and larger companies runs in our data centres and on our networks.”

Finding the answers
With its huge responsibility, A1 is always searching for better ways to successfully connect companies with the technologies of tomorrow, driving the industry forward.

Focusing on digitisation, zero touch operation is an essential component of the company’s strategy that relies on automation, security and threat detection. However, A1 needed to resolve historic operational problems and reduce costs and inefficiencies to improve the quality of service and the overall experience for its B2B customers. It also wanted to provide an informed, streamlined and enjoyable experience for its business partners.

In 2018, the company found its solutions in ServiceNow. Thomas Eder, Head of ITSM Tools at A1 Telekom, was responsible for rolling out ServiceNow across the organisation. He says that the company’s expectations were high: “We had a huge number of requirements from different departments, including network security, workplace and data centre services. ServiceNow was the best fit for it all.”

Improving customer satisfaction 
ServiceNow and A1 Telekom co-created a roadmap for the digitisation of the company’s customer service and support processes, with ServiceNow providing the products that made this possible. For example, ServiceNow Customer Service Management allows for service quality improvements to be delivered through automation, machine learning, chatbots and a self-service customer portal.

In short, A1 replaced time-consuming and labour-intensive tasks with automation and digital tools. “We can now automate a mind-boggling number of process steps”, says René Gaar, Group Leader for Business Centre Tech, A1 Telekom. “Employees work with knowledge-based flows, which means that an employee creates an enquiry or a ticket for the customer, and ServiceNow automatically suggests the best solution.”

The customers are now empowered to order new products and services online, using a catalogue and customised pricing tool. “In terms of customer service, we are light years ahead of where we were”, comments René. “At the touch of a button, live tech bots give us a 360-degree view of our customers.”

Employee satisfaction is part of the equation
A1 knows that technology is only one part of the solution. Continued success also depends on employees meeting the constantly increasing demands on service units and processes. Providing them with a centralised platform increases their efficiency and helps them navigate their tasks faster, with greater ease.

ServiceNow IT Service Management has been critical to A1’s digitisation journey. “We now have a very transparent IT ecosystem and can view network data and telecommunications data as well as IT service data very easily”, says Thomas. “Employees can proceed in a very targeted way when conducting a fault analysis of any incident reported by the customer. They no longer need to navigate their way around several systems. Instead, all the data necessary to intervene in a fault is in a single platform.”

Field engineers also benefit from the new platform. They are provided with a mobile app for accessing online and offline information to perform their jobs efficiently at customers’ homes and onsite. The whole ecosystem of information is now more accessible and easier to use.

Following the new path 
A1 employees now have a central view of the service management data, including the infrastructure needed to deliver excellent customer service. Processes are standardised and there is a clear improvement in efficiency from making the workflows transparent.

Automation has had a huge impact on the company and its day-to-day performance. A1 has established an efficient, consistent, proactive and streamlined end-to-end B2B customer service experience. It’s progressing on its digitisation journey to deliver customer self-care, but also to increase customer satisfaction and provide quick and professional support in the event of an incident.

“We used to rely on a wide range of different tools and partners for the individual stages from sales all the way back to operations”, recalls Martin, “which meant that there were system discontinuities in the process. Now, we can define an end-to-end process for our employees. They always have an overview of the latest tickets and of SLA compliance and can, therefore, significantly improve customer satisfaction.”

Building future successes on reliable solutions 
With the company’s dedication to pushing the digital envelope, its objective of standardisation of processes has been achieved. But the company is also experimenting with what else is possible. “We work with predictive analytics a lot”, says René. “If an end user creates a ticket, predictive analytics can give the probability of what the solution might be and theoretically it can even be resolved automatically.” 

Always looking towards the future, A1 Telekom has built a proven solution and a partnership with ServiceNow to rely on. These new tools will be adopted across other business units with the prospect of achieving similarly impressive and transformational results. All in terms of the service to customers, always keeping in mind how much an entire country relies on A1 Telekom.

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