OCE program as viewed by the OCE Project Sponsor Alexandre Gouvea

On the road to Outstanding Customer Experience

What is the Outstanding Customer Experience program about ?

Alexandre Gouvêa: It is the vision we have on how to deliver our brand promise and win the battle for customer loyalty. Basically, thanks to a pragmatic approach, we have defined an ambitious but realistic program focused on fixing our basics and differentiating ourselves significantly from the competition in the long run. Our methodology is simple but unique: we carry out several surveys listening to our customers, and we complete them with benchmark research, direct contact with our customers and feedback from our customer facing teams. We link those with internal performance KPIs to identify key areas of improvement and all this leads to concrete action plans.

What specific areas are the OCE program striving to improve?

AG: We are focused on strengthening the areas that are important to our customers. Operating within a technology-based industry, we run the risk of understanding the customer’s expectations simply through technical analysis rather than through a global customer relationship. Our OCE program approach helps avoid this and ensures that the customer’s voice is always heard. Currently, customers’ top priorities include service management and implementation, project management, billing and third-party telco management, among others. As a result, several of our OCE initiatives are about improving relationships. The highest levels of management at Orange Business Services are fully engaged in this program; each improvement project has a senior management sponsor, who is a member of the Orange Business Services Executive Committee, to ensure we deliver on-time results for the 18 currently identified projects.

How has the OCE been received by customers and the industry at large?

AG: The progress of the OCE projects is shared bimonthly with our user groups and on a regular basis with market leading analysts including Gartner, Forrester and Telemark to ensure that we are all in line with expectations. This global approach has already inspired Telemark, who recently launched a new survey offering enriched by our approach. As an example of positive comment we had, I would like to underline our action to align with IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) and Six Sigma standards to improve our processes and methodologies. This ensures that we are using documented best practices for our customers. Specifically, we are using ITIL in our service management improvement project and Six Sigma to improve our billing and incident management processes.

What are the key success factors?

AG: Three factors come into play: speed, effectiveness and transparency in communication. Firstly, we identify the key areas for improvement and launch the relevant actions. Secondly, we remain proactive and dynamic and constantly check that our action plans are in line with our customers’ expectations. Globally speaking, we believe Orange Business Services is better positioned than other market players. We are more responsive in terms of trouble shooting, more consistent with regards to improving our performance and more predictable. We have already received encouraging feedback from our customers and expect improvements to continue between now and the end of the year 2006.