Proximus shifts to a truly customer-centric digital company with ServiceNow

For Proximus, IT and customer service are cornerstones of its digital transformation
As Belgium’s largest telecommunications company, Proximus provides telephony, internet, TV, and mobile services to consumers, whilst providing business customers with mobile and VPN/connectivity services, as well as acting as an ICT integrator. Proximus is on a mission to connect everyone and everything so people live better and work smarter. Its overarching strategy, #shifttodigital, is the driver for Proximus’ transformation from a telco company to a digital service provider.

Proximus is on a journey to become a truly digital, customer-centric organisation that is relevant, agile, and efficient. Before embarking on its #shifttodigital transformation, the company identified key areas of focus: increase productivity by simplifying operations and increasing scalability; improve the customer experience; and empower employees to deliver superior customer service.

“Our shift to digital has meant rethinking the way customer service and IT service delivery work within our organisation. We needed to move away from using multiple tools to create one standardised platform, increase ownership and accountability, and break down barriers within the organisation,” explains Lorenz Vandamme, Agile Product Manager at Proximus.

With ServiceNow, Proximus speeds time to market and unifies operational silos
ServiceNow^® provided Proximus with an optimised, customer-centric platform to deliver customer service and IT support. An agile methodology was used throughout the ServiceNow implementation, which supports one of Proximus’strategic priorities of becoming an agile and flexible organisation.

Starting with an Agile RFP process, Proximus created use cases for ServiceNow, which iterated from simple to demanding to determine the most agile solution. This approach also led to the creation of self-steering teams and driving closer collaboration between IT and the business.

“Our new agile approach, enabled by the Now Platform^®, has improved our time to market for new solutions and broken down many of the silos that existed in our business,” comments Lorenz. “Our adoption of ServiceNow has paved the way for the broader adoption of new ways of working at Proximus.”

Transparency and automation drive accountability and faster case resolution so employees can focus on adding value for the business and customers
The wide range of tools and processes within Proximus was causing inefficiencies and making the work of customer service agents and the IT service desk much harder than it needed to be. Manual approaches and poor visibility into cases and tickets caused delays and lack of clarity regarding ownership across various teams.

By standardising customer-focused service delivery processes onto a single platform, Proximus has a complete overview of cases, with employees benefitting from clear ownership and accountability. Digital workflows are facilitating fast resolution of around 10,000 cases per month and, with the help of a diagnostic tool and intelligent routing, teams can be assigned automatically based on skills, availability, and location.

“The end goal of freeing up our employees from repetitive and unnecessary tasks is to enable them to focus on more complex challenges where they can add value to the business,” comments Lorenz. 

Greater productivity created an immediate business impact by reducing average cost of resolving a case. By the same token, the number of cases closed each week has been growing continuously.

Self-service portal centralises services and enables timelier, more personalised customer experiences
In its efforts to create a more streamlined and satisfying experience for its customers, Proximus previously introduced a portal, yet the experience was far from positive. Building the customer service portal on ServiceNow transformed this situation.

“We wanted to co-create a greater experience by working together with our customers. The ability to self-serve is a key part of our digital transformation journey and this was only going to be successful if we actively involved our customers in the process,” explains Lorenz.

During workshops with 103 customers from 57 business accounts, three key take-aways emerged: the existing portal was missing an overview of all solutions in one place; the information was often unclear, making a phone call an easier route to get information; and customers were reluctant to use the portal if it was missing any information.

“ServiceNow Customer Service Management enabled the creation of a richer customer experience for our 30,000 users by centralising all information in one place and presenting it at the right time, along with full visibility of tickets and their progress to customers,” explains Lorenz.

Complete internal visibility of the status of all business services offered by Proximus also transformed the company’s customer experience by making it timelier and more personalised. For example, by detecting the failure of a component and understanding which customers it may affect, Proximus can proactively create an incident on the customer’s behalf.

Communication with customers has become more proactive too. In the case of planned engineering works, automated notifications are sent out to customers in advance and customer service agents have visibility of incoming calls related to the issue.

ServiceNow provides a scalable foundation for Proximus’ future priorities
Lorenz and his team see a long-term relationship with ServiceNow. Its roadmap is closely aligned with Proximus’ business priorities, making it a strategic platform partner for the future.

“We will continue our digital transformation by testing and delivering new solutions on the Now Platform. One of which is the evolution of AI and virtual agents, which will be key to taking our customer service function to the next level,” explains Lorenz.

Proximus is also planning a wider roll-out to support its #shifttodigital strategy. “The out-of-the-box functionalities that come with the Now Platform are challenging our preconceptions and pushing us forward. Its flexibility makes it easy to continuously adapt and scale to any part of the Proximus business,” concludes Lorenz.

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