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Welcome to the second part of the Net Promoter Score (NPS) series! The first NPS article discussed how the Net Promoter Score can help support a telco’s bottom line. Here, we’ll answer these two questions:
The telco industry has been notorious for poor customer service - in some cases, marketing professors even point to older telco ‘bad profit’ practices as poor examples of customer relationship management. Examples like these:
Every market is different, so we cannot promise a magic bullet solution. But what we can share is what has worked for our own markets.
Our digital-only telco brand, Circles.life, was started in rebellion against the 2016 telco industry’s bad profit status quo.
“It was a burning frustration that eventually boiled over,” says the former business consultant. “That an industry that touches everyone could be so backward in terms of innovation was unbelievable to me.” says our CEO and co-founder, Rameez Ansar.
“Why are we doing this? Why does the status quo have to keep existing? I think a lot of our people have bought into this vision, too, and have this feeling of righteousness that comes from fundamentally believing that we are righting some wrong,” he said regarding what kept him going to the Peak Magazine.
We needed to make the telco experience everything it wasn’t back in 2016. We made NPS our core KPI and focused relentlessly on making the customer experience great. Our mantra is to give power back to the customers.
Onboarding needed to be seamless. Contracts needed to be easy to understand and give customers full control. Customer service needed to be delightful. Here’s how we managed to achieve an NPS above 50:
We applied all this with our partner KDDI when developing their digital mobile operator brand povo. In 2020, they faced a challenging market:
In 2021, we partnered with KDDI Digital Life (KDL), a subsidiary of KDDI Corporation, to launch povo2.0, Japan’s first fully digital 5G telco brand in just 16 weeks.
Together we made customer-centricity the main focus of the brand. Povo2.0 was designed to offer fresh, personalized digital experiences tailored to Japan’s digital natives. The aim was to enhance customer engagement and to create and diversify new revenue streams for KDL.
No Bill Shock - Giving Control Back to Japan’s Digital Natives
To give control back to Japan’s digital natives, we pioneered “0 yen plans” giving users their choice of ‘toppings’ to customize plans the way they like. Toppings include content like the DAZN entertainment service.Various services are also available for a one-off fee.
We’re committed to the ‘no more bill shock’ motto, povo2.0’s topping services plans ensures that customers only pay for what they expect.
Staying Ahead with the Innovation Engine
To continue giving customers the best experience, we built an innovation engine sandbox in our app to optimise product offers and customer journeys. We developed this plan to increase customer engagement on the app and to optimise new monetization opportunities.
Our innovation engine helped KDL achieve a high engagement rate of over 30% and an indicative 8% ARPU increase for the engaged cohort.
Povo2.0’s focus on ‘revolutionizing digital experience’ resonated with customers. Together, we achieved +30 NPS - a full 50 points higher than that period’s industry average. In the 2024 Japanese Customer Satisfaction Index, pov2.0 took the top spot in the “mobile phone customer satisfaction” category with a high score of 76.8
povo2.0’s emphasis on ‘revolutionizing digital experiences’ has resonated with customers. Its NPS score stands impressively at +30 points, which is 50 points higher than the industry average, as highlighted in a 2023 joint case study by Circles and KDL. In the 2024 Japanese Customer Satisfaction Index, povo2.0 secured the top spot in the “mobile phone customer satisfaction” category with a high score of 76.8.
povo2.0 also ranked first in the “impression index,” successfully engaging, retaining, and attracting consumers. With increasing adoption and interest in our brand’s offerings beyond core telco services, revenue diversification has become a key focus for KDL in its partnership with Circles.
T-Mobile and KDL have shown that high NPS leads to great engagement, retention, and revenue results. Measuring customer satisfaction with the telco experience through NPS remains highly relevant to telcos’ competitiveness.
Being customer-centric and breaking the historical ‘bad profit’ status quo has proven to be a winning strategy for both KDL and us.
Are you worried about catching up to your competitors with much better NPS scores?
Don’t let your NPS score drop. Make sure you book free SaaS demo or consultation to explore how we can help you maximize NPS and transform your customer experience today.
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