Uniting sales and customer service

Cloud adoption and a focus on innovation

Leading the wireless and mobile innovation charge, Danish telecom company 3 Denmark provides its customers with lightning-fast connections and a wealth of product options. Its latest services include a 5G rollout — a key enabler for self-driving cars, drone-delivered goods and remote-controlled manufacturing operations. And the company’s IT strategy reflects a similar spirit of innovation.

Six years ago, 3 Denmark became an early adopter of cloud contact centre technology. “Customer experience and agent productivity were suffering due to separate email, chat and dialer systems,” said Jonas Kristensen, Business Optimisation Manager, 3 Denmark. “Meanwhile, our on-prem telephony was approaching end-of-life and getting harder and more expensive to maintain.”

A roadmap that delivered

The company evaluated more than a dozen vendors before choosing Genesys Cloud. “Back then, the market wasn’t very mature,” added Kristensen. “We wanted to input ideas rather than drive the process. The features we needed in the future were all possible with the Genesys roadmap. And we trusted them to keep their promises, which they did.”

Today, Genesys Cloud enables 240 agents to efficiently handle calls, email, chat and outbound interactions — all managed through an omnichannel platform. It also supports the 3 OiSTER brand, which delivers affordable mobile services. Customers can also request a callback to discuss issues ranging from sales and billing queries to inquiries about call plans, coverage and repairs.

Efficient and high-performing agents

User experience was especially top of mind. Leveraging the skills and expertise of local partner Advania, the IT team was busy innovating.

“With an average age of 25, our agents are mostly digital natives,” said Kristensen. “Genesys Cloud enables us to harness that buzz and energy through things likes CRM screen pops, workforce management integration and making outbound campaigns less labor-intensive.”

Within 12 months of moving to Genesys Cloud, 3 Denmark saw a positive impact on its customer experience (CX) metrics. Net Easy Score improved by 15%, while queue times dropped by 74%.

“Our agents no longer waste time logging in and out of different systems,” added Kristensen. “This helped us achieve a 20% reduction in handle time and 10% rise in productivity. Task blending has also increased agent satisfaction. In addition, new hires can be trained and onboarded much quicker than before.”

Adaptability for remote work and services

When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, the company moved quickly to remote working, sending agents home and getting them up and running with laptops within 24 hours. As Christmas neared, lockdown restrictions forced the closure of 30 brick-and-mortar stores that ordinarily serve more than 100,000 visitors a month. Many of these customers now contacted customer service instead — triggering a 50% surge in traffic as normal queue times of 15 seconds or less climbed to over one hour at the peak.

As pressure on its remote agents mounted, 3 Denmark seized the chance to innovate and keep people employed.

“Our colleagues in customer service needed a hand,” said Mikkel Fjeldgaard, Senior Retail Insight Specialist at 3 Denmark. “So, we redeployed 140 of our retail assistants. They’ve got similar skills and knowledge and deal with the same customer issues — only face-to-face rather than over the phone.”

A team united

Calls were initially diverted via a switchboard solution, but handlers missed vital context, such as the customer’s profile, previous conversations and wait times. “We gave our retail staff a crash course in Genesys Cloud, then set up rules to tightly control which types of calls they received,” added Fjeldgaard. “We chose to only route consumer inquiries, releasing our service teams to deal with business customers and more complex requests. Our NPS and customer satisfaction ratings quickly stabilised.”

3 Denmark intends to continue unifying its customer service and sales teams. And it wants to personalise self-service with artificial intelligence (AI)-powered tools that track customer sentiment and uncover new ways to simplify business.