Celcom develops a modern digital customer journey

Client Challenge: In order to remain competitive within the Malaysian telecoms market, Celcom wanted to revitalize its customer journey with a new set of digital tools and streamline ways of working, inside and out.

Solution: Through its partnership with Capgemini, Celcom implemented new front-end channels, platforms, and processes to create a new digital journey for its customers. The transformation also introduced new flexible ways of working for Celcom team members whom Capgemini supported to enable a cultural change.

Benefits:

• 1.6 million new unique users for Celcom’s mobile applications
• 91% increase in e-store activations in less than one year
• 13% increase to its NPS satisfaction score
• Increase in online revenues of over 60%
• 25% increase in operational efficiency by eliminating duplicated efforts
• 45% year-on-year increase in story points delivered since the beginning of its cultural transformation journey
• Expected savings of approximately RM27 million over next 5 years

Adapting to the digital reality

With the world driven by digital innovation, companies across all industries have been pushed to improve the customer experience and reinvent how they operate. Those that want to maintain their leadership roles within the market must act boldly and continuously adapt within a changing landscape. Celcom Axiata, Malaysia’s first mobile operator and a member of the Axiata Berhard group, is one such bold innovator. Despite 31 years of successful operations that led to the organization providing services to over 98% of the Malaysian population, Celcom understood that continuing its string of achievements and maintaining its position as a market leader meant looking for improvement opportunities. While the organization had already updated its in-store experience, it identified the need for developing and implementing a new digital journey as part of an outreach attempt to engage a new kind of customer.

To support this effort, Celcom wanted to undergo an extensive digital transformation that would vastly change its ways of working. The organization needed to implement new technologies and tools, simplify its processes, and introduce automation where relevant. This would expand the ways in which Celcom could engage with its customers and consolidate the existing tools and processes into a simpler structure.

After establishing its objectives, Celcom decided to appoint a partner that could provide end-to-end support throughout its digital transformation journey. Considering the scale of the program and the lofty ambitions of the organization, this partner would need to have extensive industry knowledge accompanied by a proven history of delivering digital transformation solutions to major businesses.

A partnership to bring a future vision to life

Celcom selected Capgemini as a partner for its transformation journey. In addition to fitting the general requirements, Capgemini also demonstrated an extensive comprehension of Celcom’s digital vision and business objectives and a true dedication to finding innovative new ways of working. This partnership provided Celcom with the insights and expertise necessary to ensure the highest level of success.

The partners collaboratively developed a transformation plan that would update the organization’s front-end channels, platforms, and processes in order to create a new digital journey for its customers. In addition, Celcom and Capgemini agreed to follow an agile methodology that would introduce new ways of working. This approach represented a major step towards bringing Celcom’s 2020 vision to life and delivering on the promise of a modern, agile, and digital organization.

Modern channels create a new journey

The transformation program introduced new front-end channels at Celcom, beginning with a new web portal that encouraged greater engagement with a more diverse customer base. Developed on Drupal and hosted on Google Cloud, the web portal was created with accessibility in mind. Since the implementation of this portal, Celcom has now become the number one most visited telecommunications website in Malaysia, representing substantial growth in both awareness and engagement.

Next, Capgemini supported Celcom in the development of the Celcom Life mobile application. Built using a mobile first approach, Capgemini consolidated two existing mobile apps into a single experience, thereby simplifying the customer journey. This led the partners to create an e-store to support an initiative that emphasized ecommerce and multidimensional services. Following this, Capgemini and Celcom streamlined B2B operations to support in-store employee activity, paperless processes, and agent training.

The fifth and final channel was Celcom Pulse, a mobile app for retail operations that significantly enhanced the sales experience and back-office capability to Bluecubes and dealers nationwide. Since the launch of Celcom Pulse, revenues have increased fourfold in six months and the application accounts for 84% of all key transactions.

Each of these channels played a role in the simplification of Celcom’s existing processes and streamlining ways of working. Together, the tools expanded the ways in which the organization could engage with its customers, reaffirming the confidence held by those who had already engaged with the business and providing new reasons for people to explore the options Celcom offers.

In addition to updating the front-end channels at Celcom, the partners implemented a program of transformation best practices to develop a new digital approach across the business. This involved a cloud migration for the new portals, e-store, and apps in all environments, the optimization of digital processes through targeted automation, the introduction of lean, streamlined procedure maps, and the use of Robotic Process Automation (RPA).

Process transformation expanded through cultural changes

As part of the partnership, Capgemini additionally supported Celcom in implementing a cultural transformation. By providing a new set of training modules related to the freshly introduced digital processes, Capgemini made it easier for employees to operate within the new ways of working and get up to speed as quickly as possible. The upskilling opportunities ensured that not only did Celcom employees have the tools to operate more effectively but also the knowledge to take advantage of them.

Finally, the partners implemented a unique “squad-team” structure to drive constant improvement and apply a new set of KPIs based on the updated digital reality. These teams are responsible for end-to-end management of the various processes around the company, ensuring that proper expertise is used to support the right business operations. Through following the training applied by the partners and combining expertise with industry knowledge, these squads formed the basis of a truly agile approach to telecommunications and represented Celcom’s complete commitment to a modern, digital approach to its business.

Altogether, the program implemented by Celcom and Capgemini and the efforts they took therein fulfilled the goal of creating agile ways of working that would enhance both the digital culture at Celcom and the customer journey. The transformation has led to a number of impressive results, including:

• 1.6 million new unique users for Celcom’s mobile applications
• 91% increase in e-store activations in less than one year
• 13% increase to its NPS satisfaction score
• Increase in online revenues of over 60%
• 25% increase in operational efficiency by eliminating duplicated efforts
• 45% year-on-year increase in story points delivered since the beginning of its cultural transformation journey
• Expected savings of approximately RM27 million over next 5 years

Collaborative success

The success of this program was in large part due to the ability of all relevant stakeholders to commit to the 2020 vision and cooperation across companies, organizational units and teams, including Celcom, Capgemini, and other partners. By operating as a single team rather than two separate businesses, the organizations were able to completely understand the challenges they faced as well as the options available to address them. In the future, Celcom plans to further intensify its focus on customer experience and, with support from Capgemini, will incorporate additional digital technologies such as finance and HR automation, a back office portal for the finance, dealer, and flagship stores, and a composite microservice platform.

By undergoing this transformation journey, Celcom has established itself as a digital innovation leader in the Malaysian telecommunications market. With this combination of extensive in-store capabilities and a best-in-class digital experience, the organization can provide a truly unique level of engagement with its customer base. This program has once again demonstrated Celcom’s dedication to innovation and its customers while also providing yet another proof point of Capgemini’s flexibility and aptitude for delivering unique, large-scale, best-in-class solutions.