Communications Company Three UK took this year’s crown for Customer Experience team of the Year in the IT, Systems and Telecoms category at the Customer Experience Award.
But who is Three and what made them stand out to the judges?
Fighting off tough competition from five other companies for the title – including BSkyB and Virgin Media – Three stood out in this competitive category by demonstrating how it changed the essence of its business culture.
“At Three our goal is to give our customers the best mobile experience available. We have built a network which allows customers to do the things they want to do and we work hard to help our customers really enjoy the experience on their devices.
“With this strong network foundation in place, Three has focused on bringing the same emphasis on quality, simplicity and enjoyment to the experience our customers have when they interact with us,” commented Head of Customer Insight & Continuous Improvement, Edwina Smith.
“We have gone into the very heart of the business and changed the essence of our culture. From an entrepreneurial, fast paced, dynamic and commercially focused culture, to one that remains fast paced and dynamic, but now uses customer insight to balance commercial drivers and that of customer experience.”
Since 2011, Three has been using a customer feedback tool, Pulse, to help shape the decisions they make as a business to improve the experience they give to their customers. This resulted in a number of initiatives and activities to improve customer experience across all channels, including contact centre, stores and website. These new approaches have been tested and trialled to make sure they work for Three customers and have led to real improvements in how customers rate their service.
“The introduction of Pulse has enabled us to put customer insight at the heart of what we do and bring significant benefits to our customers as a result.”
“We created a framework for multi-channel insight that allows us to compare experience across hundreds of transaction types. We are using it to make informed decisions ranging from key customer journey improvement and operational performance to store designs – and most things in between. All have served to improve Net Promoter Score and overall customer experience. These are the tangible things we see and can measure. What has stood out is the significant mind-set shift that has happened within our business,” explained Edwina.
The size and scale of what Three has achieved is impressive, the judges describing this as a “fantastic initiative to make customer experience sit at the heart of the business. It’s fantastic how a small number of people with the right tools can have a major impact on the customer experience for the better.”
“I have personally been privileged to have the opportunity to lead a programme and initiative such as this – but the journey is not over yet. The focus on insight means we’re always looking at our customer experience and making sure that we continue to deliver enjoyable customer experiences across the business,” added Edwina.
Three’s Director of Customer Service, Rocky Atkins, added: “This is the first time we’ve won an award for customer experience and what makes it exciting for me is that it’s truly a multi-channel award. The customer-facing teams in the Contact Centre and Retail obviously deserve a huge amount of credit, but this award would not have been possible without insight-led, cross-functional working. It feels like our focus on the customer is starting to pay off and it makes me very confident about what we can achieve going forward.”