Personalised business cards for shop staff and first name basis relationships with customers are paying dividends for Telstra.
Since adding a few personal touches to its customer service over the past year, the telco has improved its Net Promoter Score (NPS).
David Thodey, CEO of Telstra, said: “Five years ago we said 'customer advocacy is going to be our number one priority'. That remains our number one strategic imperative. It's about improving customer service, delivering better products and making it easy to do business with us.”
He said the telco's moves to personalise customer service have been paying off.
“We made a big change – we said 'whenever you talk to someone at Telstra, we will give you our name and contact details',” said Thodey. “Also, whenever anyone buys a prepaid service, they will get a ring back within 48 hours to ask how it's going. This has been really well received. All our people in shops now have a business card.
“We have seen significant improvements in our NPS scores across all interactions we've had with customers. In terms of our contact centres, we have seen an improvement of nearly 12 NPS points. In the field, it's increased 13 points.”
Other introductions have included the Telstra Platinum customer tech support, the Thanks program of rewards such as reduced cinema and sports events tickets, and the 'new phone feeling' allowing customers a new phone after 12 months.
Thodey added: “We are going to continue to focus on this – if we don't, we can't move forward. We must continue to find differentiation.”
He said social media continues to be a big focus: “Facebook, Twitter and CrowdSupport continue to be rolled out. We must continue to become a truly digital and social company. We need to be where our customers want us, 24/7.
“Forty-six per cent of our services are now digital,” said Thodey. “Three years ago, we were at about 10%, so that's a great result.”
The news came as part of Telstra's full year results announcements this morning, which revealed the telco has 937,000 more mobile customers than it did last year – a total of 16 million.
Revenue from mobile increased by 5.1% over the past 12 years. Telstra today reported shareholder returns of $4.7 billion this year, up from $3.5 billion last year.
Andrew Penn, chief financial officer at Telstra, reported sales revenue of $25.1 billion (up from $24.3 billion last year) and total income of $26. 3 billion (up from $24.8 billion). That includes the proceeds from Telstra's sale of its 70% share in the Sensis directory and of Hong Kong mobile business CSL.
Telstra's revenue via Foxtel was up 1.4%, with total subscribers up 5.6% to 2.6 million. “The launch of the Presto app helped,” said Penn, adding: “On Tuesday we announced our acquisition of Ooyala – that will be the foundation of our intelligent video platform.”
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