“There must be a huge problem when, in such a core industry that touches everyone, both the customers and companies are struggling. The industry structure is an oligopoly, telcos have no incentive to innovate, and they’ve got big capex cycles… They’ve lost the sense of what it means to build a great product and customer experience.”
Rameez Ansar
Co-founder
“There must be a huge problem when, in such a core industry that touches everyone, both the customers and companies are struggling. The industry structure is an oligopoly, telcos have no incentive to innovate, and they’ve got big capex cycles… They’ve lost the sense of what it means to build a great product and customer experience.”
Rameez Ansar
Co-founder
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:
What has been hampering telco NPS scores?
Are there proven ways to improve customer experience and NPS scores?
What Decreases a Telco's NPS score
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:
Complicated Billing and Bill Shock
“Why am I being charged for this?!”
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
This lack of transparency
repulses customers and frustrates those who want to switch to
better deals.
Poor customer service experiences
Being placed on hold for long periods, customer service agents who get lost if you veer off the script, and having to hop through many hoops to get an answer.
You may have experienced at least one of these issues before, and it was related to telco customer service.
Poor network quality
Spotty coverage can cause users to wander around looking for places with better reception, and during this painful period, they will consider switching to a more reliable mobile carrier.
Complicated Billing and Bill Shock
“Why am I being charged for this?!”
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
This lack of transparency repulses customers and
frustrates those who want to switch to better deals.
Poor customer service experiences
Being placed on hold for long periods, customer
service agents who get lost if you veer off the
script, and having to hop through many hoops to get
an answer. You may have experienced at least one of
these issues before, and it was related to telco
customer service.
Poor network quality
Spotty coverage can cause users to wander around
looking for places with better reception, and during
this painful period, they will consider switching to
a more reliable mobile carrier.
Proven Ways to Improve NPS
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.
Achieving +50 NPS and Smashing the Status Quo
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:
Flexible, No-Contract Plans
We offer flexible plans that cater to our customers' diverse needs, ensuring they only pay for what they use.
We release products based on their needs, such as Jetpac for jet-setters too.
Fast Customer Support
Our customer chat response time averages around 27 seconds, significantly reducing wait times and increasing customer satisfaction.
We look for ways to incorporate today’s technology to empower our customer service agents and improve customer service speed and accuracy.
Bill Transparency
We prioritize transparency in billing, eliminating hidden fees and ensuring customers understand their charges. We pride ourselves on no bill shock.
Rapid SIM Delivery
As we have no physical footprint, our efficient SIM delivery process helps customers start using our services as fast as possible.
Personalized Experiences
Using data-driven insights, we tailor our services to meet each customer's unique needs, enhancing their overall experience.
We also focus on experimentation through our in-app innovation engine and obsess over optimising our users' best experiences and offers.
Rewarding Referral Programs
Our referral programs offer attractive rewards, encouraging promoters to spread the word and bring in new customers.
Swipe here to learn more
Our Partners Benefit From This Too
We applied all this with our partner KDDI when developing their digital mobile operator brand povo. In 2020, they faced a challenging market:
Stagnating revenues
A mature, high-tech population with 91.6% mobile penetration,
with 100% of them being postpaid users
The rise of over-the-top (OTT) messaging and voice services has
placed significant pressure on financial performance
Poor industry-wide NPS ratings
52.7 for Mobile Network Operators
21.3 for Mobile Virtual Network Operators
The NPS survey revealed that customer satisfaction on
value-for-money failed to increase despite its importance.
Increasing costs
Huge CAPEX investments are required to expand 5G infrastructure while maintaining high-quality service levels and existing 4G networks, which further strains financial resources.
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.
KDL's Results
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.
Have You Been Improving Your NPS Score?
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.