StarHub Ltd - Customer Service Department of the Year

Company: StarHub Ltd, Singapore
Company Description: StarHub Ltd is one of the four major telcos in the Republic of Singapore,
Nomination Category: Customer Service Department Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Customer Service Department of the Year - Telecommunications

Nomination Title: StarHub Ltd

The nominated department is the Customer Experience Division, which is responsible for the operations, strategy and innovation of StarHub’s brand of service. Starhub is the 2nd largest Telco in Singapore. And, much to the market’s dismay, despite the company’s significant footprint its contact centre struggled to consistently meet operational metrics and was heavily criticized by customers on social media and in surveys as one of the worse in the industry.

It was in the years prior to 2018 that StarHub’s customer service department had been a victim of mismanagement and neglect, where key investments in technology, automation and supporting infrastructure had not been made as management had a myopic view and decided to bank on short term gains without care for the long-term impact of these decisions.

However, all this changed in 2019, under new management, when StarHub launched the “HelloChange” campaign with a focus on differentiating itself in the market through unparalleled customer service experience. What was once an area that was grossly neglected and mismanaged, soon became the company’s focus and unique proposition to differentiate its services in a market where price, product and service quality had become a commodity in parity.

Outline the department's achievements since July 1 2019 that you wish to bring to the judges' attention (up to 250 words):

Below is an outline of our multi-year transformation programme:

Implementation of Net Promoter Score (NPS) as an organizational-wide measure for Customer Experience. Prior to the establishment of NPS as a single measure, StarHub had employed disparate KPIs across various departments.

Aggressive NPS targets set, tied to bonus, to incentivise teams to focus on customer-centricity and collaborate toward a single outcome.

Heavy investments in digital platforms:
-Real-time NPS engine – to measure voice of customer in real-time
-Investment in My StarHub App – to improve customers’ ability to do self-service and reducing customers’ need to call
-Investment in Telephony and IVR automation – to properly route calls and ensure that customers who have had to call more than once gets routed to a seasoned agent
-Investment in a world-class Knowledge Management System – investment in a knowledge management system, and team responsible for updating content ensures that both frontliners and customers.

Investments in supporting mechanisms for customer service
-Establishment of a CX Strategy Team – responsible for improving overall customer journey, launch programmes and fix systemic product issues and to eliminate customers pain and NPS detractors.
-Establishment of a Process, Quality Assurance and Training Team - checks and balance were created to audit the quality and provide unbiased and targeted training and process flows to standardize and hold the operations team accountable.
-Implementation of First Call Resolution (FCR) and “transactional” Net-Promoter Score (NPS) to measure contact centre performance and its impact to customer experience.

Since early 2020, with the implementation of this strategy and our transformation programme coming into place our NPS has seen a sharp increase by 22.37 points from January 2019 to December 2020, while our FCR improved from 70 to 87 from June 2019 to December 2020. Our Agent’s NPS even peaked at 49.54, nearly double the telecommunication industry’s average score of 24 according to Satmetrix, ushering a new era of customer experience for us and our valued customers.

This means customers are significantly happier with their experience, and are likely to stay/spend more, as well as recommend the service to family and friends.

On top of that, our improved customer handling and processes helped increase our Service Level from 66.1% to 95.5% from the month of January to May 2020. This means that customers who call, now receive the highest level of service quality possible. They rarely wait in queue and the level of service is only getting better.

Inbound call volumes had also dropped significantly by 53% by December 2020, significantly improving our ability to serve customers speedily and efficiently. Customers have less reasons to call the contact centre because insights gathered from call drivers lead to enhancements to address it, reducing customers’ need to call.