SONATEL

Sonatel group offers comprehensive telecommunications solutions in fixed-line and mobile telephony as well as Internet, television and data services to individuals and businesses. French telecom giant, Orange, has a 42% stake in the Group, which is the market leader in Senegal. Active in Mali since 2002, Guinea Conakry and Guinea Bissau since 2007 and Sierra Leone since 2016, Sonatel group is the leading operator in West Africa. Sonatel has developed a fully digital network of international links using high-speed submarine fiber optic cables.

The Group is a strategic company for the economies of its locations. It has transformed Senegal, its home country, into a traffic hub and a major player in the development of telecoms in Africa and throughout the world. Through its commercial brand, Orange, Sonatel provides its customers with opportunities for converging mobile, Internet and television technologies. Previously, Sonatel’s sales agents used several applications to handle requests from millions of customers.

Against this background, Sonatel wanted to streamline all its processes by equipping its sales consultants with a single interface. This enables them to view and edit back-end information processed previously. The goal of the project (known as “KIBARU”) is to save precious interaction time between sales consultants and their customers. The outcome: improved customer experience. The answer lies in acquiring a 360-degree view application. The reduced time spent processing customer requests, combined with the improved quality of responses, improve customer satisfaction. “The challenge lies in providing a premium experience to customers every time we interact with them,” explained Mr. Coundoul, Head of the Service Engineering Department.

Partners who manage the distribution of offers represent both the Orange brand and Sonatel’s integrated distribution networks. To ensure a balanced relationship with them and equal handling of customer requests, partners must use the same solutions. Mr. Coundoul added, “Anyone who interacts with the customer must have the tools required to satisfy them in the best possible way. This applies to sales consultants in contact centers and internal and external call centers as well as direct network sellers and partners at franchise stores. The same goes for level 2 and 3 support for organizations in contact with customers. Everyone must have the same 360-degree view.”

This is a key issue since, in addition to its consistent corporate strategy, Sonatel decided to adopt a shared solution for all its entities and networks. Thus, the Group set up a service center shared by all its subsidiaries. A factor that influenced the decision was the fact that Sonatel is located in French-speaking countries. Another crucial factor was the economies of scale achieved by opting for technology that is shared across its channels. Mr. Coundoul commented, “If each country had its own solution, the overall Group costs would increase three- or fourfold.”

The EXALEAD (OneCall) Customer Vue360 solution streamlines the various CRMs used within Sonatel. On top of this, it combines diverse applications used by agents for each contact as well as the different front and back offices of the information system (IS). It also deletes duplicate entries. Binta Diatta Seye, Head of Customer IS Service and Planning, said, “Vue360 also resolves the central problem of knowledge gaps about our customers by collating all available back-end customer information.” The solution simplifies the customer journey and standardizes CRM processes, improving the overall experience in line with Sonatel’s customer experience charter.

Ms. Diatta Seye added, “We set a range of technological standards to select our 360-degree view solution. It needed to be able to collect data from different sources by leveraging a recognized indexing engine that works effectively and has a proven track record. A key factor in making our decision was that some of the Group’s subsidiaries had already approved and deployed the EXALEAD brand solution and its applications.”

As a result, Sonatel opted for the EXALEAD (OneCall) Customer Vue360 solution. More specifically, the solution also met budgetary and financial targets.

Sonatel’s Vue360 decision is consistent with the CX 2020 program developed by Orange. CX 2020 puts the customer experience first. Mr. Mamadou Coundoul concluded, “Vue360 is ideally suited to our needs. Not only does it improve the customer experience, but it also makes life easier for all our sales staff.”

Binta Diatta Seye added, “We really value the seamless integration of Vue360 in our information system. One of the challenges involved collecting data from all our back-end areas. We wanted to be in a position to consolidate the data in a single place in order to send it out as quickly as possible to our agents during their customer interactions. The challenge was met with success!” The time taken to answer customer requests was reduced and the positive customer experience is reflected in the lack of customer attrition. Sonatel enjoys high customer retention, owing to the quality of its customer service.

To date, the solution has mostly been used as an interface displaying customer data, particularly contractual information. The sales consultant may edit customer contracts and other such related information. Consultants may also notify customers of eligible and existing offers. However, Mamadou Coundoul specified that this is a “long-term scenario. Optimizing our customer knowledge will allow us to go one step further and use Vue360 to develop new offers.”

During call interaction with a customer, the sales consultant opens the application and has one-click access to all contractual information available and an overview of the customer’s activity with Sonatel. All customer data has been consolidated into Vue360 using an installed database comprising all fixed-line, mobile and Internet contracts. Customers’ financial data is also accessible, as is information regarding their devices and access. Prior to deploying Vue360, this information could only be accessed by using different interfaces.

The single interface allows for requests to be triggered intuitively in back-end systems. For instance, to activate a service for a postpaid mobile contract, Vue360 uses the back-end activation request function, which stores postpaid contracts. Binta Diatta Seye added, “It gives sales consultants an advantage in their daily activities, facilitating their interactions with customers. A 360-degree view quickly resolves issues. This means consultants have more time to focus on other offers they can suggest to customers.”

Consulting and digital services company Keyrus supported Sonatel in the roll-out of the solution. Keyrus deployed its OMNIFLOW solution, which is based on EXALEAD OneCall technology. Informed by its knowledge of other industries, the firm made recommendations by drawing on its expertise and experience within Orange.

For Abdoulaye Seye, IS and Customer Relations Project Manager, integration went fully according to plan, thanks to the responsiveness and professionalism of his teams. “We operated in an agile mode, using workshops focused on Design Thinking and UX/UI Design as well as integration, test and approval phases. Keyrus has long-standing experience in all of these respects, with a good understanding of our technical environments,” he said.

The challenges posed by integration focused on responsiveness, meeting deadlines and respecting the integrity of recovered data and speed of information searches. Abdoulaye Seye added, “The data are arranged into dedicated sections, based on use cases specific to clearly identified business processes. This means we are positioned to manage updates and deliveries for each use case, guaranteeing scalability for business teams.”

Although the time saved in information searches has not been measured due to lack of information for comparison purposes, Mamadou Coundoul notes that “All platform users have observed the benefits in terms of time saved and the convenience and quality of customer relations. A case in point is the nearly 10% reduction in average processing time for requests at prepaid mobile call centers. The latter accounts for more than 80% of our customer interactions.”