Swisscom surprises in customer stress test
Many Swiss companies know how important it is to show customer appreciation by paying attention. For example, the mission statements of many companies say: “We put the customer first”, “We inspire our customers”. Is this really the case? How do companies react when customers make unusual requests? We tested a few. Most of them were not bad, but Swisscom was surprising.
Can large companies handle unusual customer requests? We put it to the test and came up with unusual customer requests for large Swiss companies that are difficult to meet. We tested Migros, Coop and Swisscom. Migros and Coop were not bad at all. But we won’t go into that here. Swisscom really surprised us in a positive way. To lure the telecoms giant out of its shell, we came up with the following request: “Hello, I don’t know if this is the right place, but I’m an enthusiastic Swisscom customer and iPhone fan. I will be travelling to the USA next October and will be visiting Silicon Valley. I have read that Swisscom has an office in Silicon Valley. Would it be possible for me to visit Swisscom there and find out how Swisscom benefits from this innovative environment? That would be great. Best regards.” We sent the enquiry to the Swisscom Priorité team. Although this team is there for good customers, they tend to deal with questions about mobile phone subscriptions – and certainly not with arranging travel experiences.
Just a few hours after the request, the following information appears on the Combox: “Thank you for your request. We still need some time to make the necessary clarifications, but will be in touch shortly.” A few days later, the following email reply arrives: “We have just received a response to your enquiry regarding a visit to Silicon Valley. Thank you for your interest! We are pleased to inform you that the responsible person is available on site. I am sending you the contact details of the office manager. You can contact him directly. The address of the Swisscom outpost in Silicon Valley is…”
But that’s not all: so that I know who I’m dealing with, Swisscom sends me a link to a short portrait of the office manager in addition to the direct e-mail. There is a photo of the “host” with the following description: “The office manager has been working at Swisscom’s Silicon Valley outpost since January 2014. The network and telecommunications engineer previously gained experience at all levels of the innovation process at the Cern nuclear research centre in Geneva and at Swisscom. Since September, he has been leading the outpost’s three-person core team. His main task is to “find disruptive start-ups with which Swisscom can build service innovations in Switzerland.”
Too bad the trip to Silicon Valley is just an invention. The Swisscom Priorité team has really gone the extra mile to achieve more than just customer satisfaction. A real model of customer orientation! They managed to make an extraordinary wish come true, even though it required cross-departmental work and the employees had to deal with services and people they probably didn’t know themselves. It takes time and sometimes a bit of overcoming, but it is the only way to really inspire and retain customers. More importantly, the customer is likely to tell others about such an experience. They will recommend Swisscom to their friends. And personal recommendations are more effective than any form of advertising.
(This article is an abridged version of a report in the AMAG staff magazine “Familie”, for which Heads carried out this mystery shopping).