Our lives are entwined with technology. We see as it becomes more innovative than it was last week, more fluid than it was the day before. We see the constant improvements that it brings us and how it makes our lives easier instead of harder. Why then, when we often deal with the telecommunications industry does it feel like the reverse is true?
How Telcom are using collaboration and agility to delight our customers and forge a new direction in the telecommunications industry
Stepping off the merry-go-round
Prior to my life at Telcom, I have had four years worth of experience working for one of the largest ISPs in the UK. I have seen firsthand how a lack of empowering your agents, together with an inflexible service model can make for a painful customer experience. An example of this can often be seen in a lack of accountability when calling up to discuss an issue, each agent citing that you need to speak to a different department until eventually it becomes an unending merry-go-round as you bounce from agent to agent, with no resolution to your problem and no end in sight.
Here at Telcom, it is the polar opposite. We have an extremely special, close-knit team at Telcom that places our customers at the heart of everything we do. Each one of us is encouraged and empowered to think outside the box in order to continuously delight our customers every day, in fact, I’d go as far as to say that each and everyone one of us is obsessed with our customers’ satisfaction which is why you’ll never go on the merry-go-round with us.
In the age of technology, collaboration is king
As far as internet providers go, Telcom isn’t yet amongst the largest in the UK when compared to the likes of BT, Vodafone and Virgin Media however what we lack in size, we more than make up for by being extremely agile and collaborative.
Internally, we use off the shelf systems like Slack which are amazing for us. Slack blurs the lines between departments to encourage constant communication and teamwork. We also have a self-built customer CRM which our head of systems named Watson (which perhaps unsurprisingly is now the name of his puppy). Again, this system is built around collaboration, a one-size fits all CRM that every department uses. Thank god we implemented this before the nation was forced to work remotely.
We embody the belief that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and that by truly coming together in partnership and collaboration, we can achieve what we may not have otherwise achieved alone. The incredible relationships we have built our large-name customers and our relationships with local councils stand as testament to that belief.
Rewriting the rule book
You don’t have to survey many people to get a terrible story about a household-brand internet provider. People expect their internet to just work, like a utility. And frankly why shouldn’t they?
The competitiveness of ISPs is affected by how quickly they can adapt to the changing needs of their customers. Telcom understands this fact and it is that which underpins our philosophy of empowering our people to empower our customers. Our customers see this in our responsiveness and adaptability with whatever they come to us with. In many ways, it’s a result of working smarter, thereby creating an infrastructure which brings out the best in our team by pulling together all of our considerable expertise for our customers. We know that if we cannot keep our customers in the race then we fall behind, so we fight to keep them front and centre at all times.