UPC Austria
Company: UPC Austria, Vienna, Austria
Company Description: UPC Austria, consolidated subsidiary of Liberty Global Inc., is a leading multimedia-provider offering 1.3 Million high-speed internet, Digital TV- and telephone-services to around 700,000 customers. UPC is driven by its vision that this amazing but often complex digital world should be for everyone. Its employees strive to bring simplicity and a real human touch into everything they do.www.upc.at
Nomination Category: Customer Service & Call Center Awards Team Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Customer Service Team of the Year - Recovery Situation
Nomination Title: UPC Austria Churn Busters
Tell the story about what this nominated team achieved since the beginning of July 2010 (up to 500 words). Focus on specific accomplishments, and relate these accomplishments to past performance or industry norms. Be sure to mention obstacles overcome, innovations or discoveries made, and outcomes:
The Austrian telecommunication market is characterized by cut-throat
competition. Customers who switch their providers get lost for at least one
year or even forever. The fixed line telephony market is on a decline, the
markets for broadband internet and television are penetrated aggressively by
mobile operators. New clients are rare in mature markets.
Until the end of 2009, the UPC Customer Care team did a great job as a service
and sales unit. But churn rate increased over the years. Ergo another topic
has become the next challenge: Customer Retention. For UPC, this meant a
profound change process: the focus needed to shift from solely acquiring new
clients to retaining existing clients.
Three years ago, Silvia Schöpf, Vice President Customer Operations, made it
her business to proactively install a professional retention programme within
customer care. To make the retention programme meaningful and successful in
the long run, Silvia decided 2010 to make retention part of the whole customer
care team (in house and outsourcing) as well as the UPC shops. The aim of this
programme is to ensure customers remain with UPC feeling appreciated, safe and
cared for and consequently drastically reduce churn rates.
Silvia defined one interdisciplinary common process and retention team which
was a game changing experience for the players: one common leader, common
objectives, common values and a common team spirit were the consequence of
Silvia’s management style. She established overall short- and long term goals
and know-how transfer between team mates via customer care intranet
activities, best practice workshops and a buddy system. Existing clients
became the most valuable treasure within the company.
The high involvement and alignment of the team has been made visible by the
common activities the united team has gone through: Team mates created their
team name CHURN BUSTERS and their logo, they rephrased the song Ghost Busters
into Churn Busters and made a video.
Results: The retention programme is a tremendous success: Since 2010, 150.604
services of 71.641 customers were saved, which generated an additional 26
Million Euro of Revenue. Churn rate decreased by 41%. The ROI is breath-
taking: For every Euro invested, UPC generates € 8.97 of revenue. 98% and 92%
of the customers are still loyal customers after having been retained one or
two years ago respectively, which clearly indicates the sustainability of the
programme.
- Customers notably appreciated the UPC commitment and chose UPC Austria
as “most customer oriented Triple Play service provider in Austria” (OKD is
the most important competition on Customer Focus in Austria).
- The Activity Report of the Austrian Conciliation Body honoured UPC Austria
as role model for the whole industry in Austria.
- The World Communication Awards for the Telco industry honoured the Churn
Busters engagement as Best Customer Care in the Telco industry worldwide.
- The joint team created a bank of ideas, where concepts on how to retain
existing clients are collected. The best ideas are awarded once a year and
have been realized within the retention programme.
List hyperlinks to any online news stories, press releases, or other documents that support the claims made in the section above. IMPORTANT: Begin each link with http://, and enclose each link in square brackets; for example, [http://www.youraddress.com]:
Provide a brief (up to 100 words) biography about the leader(s) of the nominated team:
The team called itself CHURN BUSTERS: Inspired by the heroes of the Ghost
Busters movies, the teammates set the goal to “exorcize” bad vibes to turn
every unsteady relation into a joyful and long-term customer relation. In
2010, all customer touch points – 7 internal & external contact centres plus 5
shops - were involved in the holistic customer loyalty and care programme.
Team members created both name and logo of the „Churn Busters“ program. They
rephrased the song „Ghost Busters“ into „Churn Busters“ to allegorize their
activities and aims and even made a video. (See Attachement)