Telekomunikacja Polska dramatically improves responsiveness through a customer-centric business transformation.

Prior to the deregulation of telecom-munications services in Poland, Telekomunikacja Polska (TP, www.telekomunikacja.pl) was Poland’s state-owned telecommunications services provider. Today, eight years after privatization, TP (as part of the global France Telecom telecommuni­cations group) still commands more than 90 percent of the local telephony market and enables almost 95 per­cent of international connections from Poland. The company employs ap­proximately 28,000 staff and serves more than 11 million customers and businesses—adding up to 600,000 new subscribers each year.

TP was not always the innovative company it is today. Manual, paper-intensive business processes exacerbated customer dissatisfaction by creating excessively long order cycle times. A decentralized business model reduced operational efficiency, which prevented the company from effectively responding to its customers. These costly, labor-intensive business practices prevented TP from capturing customer information that would enable the company to anticipate its customers’ needs and develop new services or determine how it could improve existing offerings.

After deregulation of the telecommunications industry, customers switched carriers because they had the choice. As a result, TP quickly experienced customer attrition and declining market share. In response, the company developed a business strategy that would enable it to create a customer-focused and operationally efficient organization. And that would help TP overcome perceptions of unsatisfactory customer service.

By focusing on providing services to meet the needs of individual customers and leveraging a new operational model, TP aimed not only to streamline its business processes but to attract new customers and retain existing ones. These key steps would help the company maintain competitive advantage in the burgeon­ing telecommunications market, which was expected to flourish when Poland became a member of the EU.

Responding to customer needs—on demand
TP needed a solution that would enable it to achieve its customer relationship management (CRM) goals by consolidating hundreds of small regional offices into one centralized, call-center environment. With a more efficient, customer-focused infrastructure that could readily adapt to the company’s evolving business needs, TP could reduce customer-service and IT-administration costs while increasing customer responsiveness. The company also needed an experienced solution provider, with the expertise required to help it make the transformation to a new, more efficient operational model—while allowing it to focus internal resources on expanding its network and taking new offerings to market.

A business model that focuses on customers — and increases competitive advantage
Changing TP’s business processes and organizational structure was paramount to helping the company stay focused on its business objectives—remaining competitive in an expanding economic and political landscape, and increasing its responsiveness to customers. To meet these business goals, TP worked with IBM Global Business Services (GBS) to transform its existing paper-intensive, manual processes into a multicomponent CRM solution that could transcend the boundaries existing between organizational and business units across the company. Customer-care processes were the primary focus—including almost all elements of sales, service, billing, provisioning, and fault- and inquiry-related processes.

IBM Global Business Services helped TP create an entirely new customer-care and CRM organization, based on a centralized call-center infrastructure that enables employees to give more attention to delivering high-quality customer care. The new solution provides the flexibility and adaptability TP needs to quickly adjust its services to meet customer demand and helps the company compete more effectively in Poland’s increasingly competitive market. Service is available 24x7, which was not previously possible, with the average time to answer a customer call at 30 seconds—compared to minutes and hours spent queuing at customer service offices before this service became available.

Building a cost-effective, efficient customer-care system
IBM Global Business Services orchestrated TP’s transition to its new business model by training more than 7,000 regional office staff unfamiliar with Web-based systems—in only four months. On the technical side, TP’s business transformation is underpinned by a robust, cross-platform CRM system from Oracle PeopleSoft, customized to meet the company’s unique needs. At the time, it was the largest Oracle PeopleSoft CRM deployment globally. IBM MQSeries and IBM MQSeries Integrator software integrates the new system with legacy billing and network inventory management systems. Interactive voice response (IVR) technology and Genesys skills-based routing direct each customer call to the appropriate agent. All billing and provisioning information is presented through a single interface, which maximizes efficiency and reduces response times dramatically. This transparency across systems also enables staff to automatically catch errors and easily share information throughout the organization.

A business model that focuses on customers — and increases competitive advantage
Changing TP’s business processes and organizational structure was paramount to helping the company stay focused on its business objectives—remaining competitive in an expanding economic and political landscape, and increasing its responsiveness to customers. To meet these business goals, TP worked with IBM Global Business Services (GBS) to transform its existing paper-intensive, manual processes into a multicomponent CRM solution that could transcend the boundaries existing between organizational and business units across the company. Customer-care processes were the primary focus—including almost all elements of sales, service, billing, provisioning, and fault- and inquiry-related processes.

IBM Global Business Services helped TP create an entirely new customer-care and CRM organization, based on a centralized call-center infrastructure that enables employees to give more attention to delivering high-quality customer care. The new solution provides the flexibility and adaptability TP needs to quickly adjust its services to meet customer demand and helps the company compete more effectively in Poland’s increasingly competitive market. Service is available 24x7, which was not previously possible, with the average time to answer a customer call at 30 seconds—compared to minutes and hours spent queuing at customer service offices before this service became available.

Building a cost-effective, efficient customer-care system
IBM Global Business Services orchestrated TP’s transition to its new business model by training more than 7,000 regional office staff unfamiliar with Web-based systems—in only four months. On the technical side, TP’s business transformation is underpinned by a robust, cross-platform CRM system from Oracle PeopleSoft, customized to meet the company’s unique needs. At the time, it was the largest Oracle PeopleSoft CRM deployment globally. IBM MQSeries and IBM MQSeries Integrator software integrates the new system with legacy billing and network inventory management systems. Interactive voice response (IVR) technology and Genesys skills-based routing direct each customer call to the appropriate agent. All billing and provisioning information is presented through a single interface, which maximizes efficiency and reduces response times dramatically. This transparency across systems also enables staff to automatically catch errors and easily share information throughout the organization.