Interview – Didier Lelièvre, Deputy CEO and Director of Networks and Services
Customer Experience Management (CEM) is now a central focus in telecom operators' strategies — why is that?
DL: In an uncertain economic climate and an increasingly competitive environment, customer experience has become a cost-effective differentiator.
Deploying ultra-fast networks, especially mobile ones, to support new usages with innovative services is certainly important — but it requires substantial investment, with returns only in the medium term.
Moreover, high mobile penetration rates in many regions are pushing operators to focus more on retention and protecting their existing customer base rather than launching costly acquisition campaigns. Acquiring a new customer costs six to seven times more than retaining an existing one — the numbers speak for themselves!
Customers today are increasingly connected and mobile. They naturally move from one device to another — landline, smartphone, tablet, TV — and they have an overwhelming choice of offers.
Price or content alone is no longer enough to fully satisfy them, build loyalty, or increase usage. The overall quality of the customer experience, and how it is perceived, is becoming the real differentiator. From signing up to service cancellation — and throughout all interaction points (sales, customer service, installation, repair, activation, billing...) — managing the customer experience creates value and is a major opportunity to become a reference operator.
What are the key levers for improving customer experience management in telecoms?
DL: Customer experience is central to customer satisfaction and must be approached holistically, by evaluating the entire end-to-end customer journey.
There are many improvement levers, and every customer interaction — whether physical or online — is a chance to create satisfaction and stand out from the competition. All operator functions — from retail to billing, from network maintenance to IT performance, including HR — are involved and must contribute to enhancing the customer experience.
Mastering the customer experience has become a strategic priority for all operators, whether mobile or converged. The key is moving from multichannel to cross-channel strategies — ensuring global consistency and seamlessness between channels (point of sale, website, customer service, self-care). Satisfied and loyal customers also become brand ambassadors.
That said, operators vary in their maturity on this issue. It requires a comprehensive analysis. Not all operators have the same level of customer understanding, customer-centric culture, or capability to manage customer relationships across their value chain.
Sofrecom, thanks to its experience with Orange and other operators, is well-equipped to support them. Orange was a pioneer, launching its CEM program in 2010. We have capitalized on this to develop a pragmatic, global, and actionable approach.
What is Sofrecom’s CEM approach?
DL: We are convinced that the quality and effectiveness of CEM relies on its cross-functionality. We work to implement concrete action plans across the entire operator value chain.
The foundation of our approach is measuring customer satisfaction — or rather dissatisfaction — and its root causes. We believe a solid CEM approach must be built on observed, measured, and analyzed facts. To do this, we use a wide range of methods and tools, including Net Promoter Score (NPS) and complaint analysis.
The goal: to listen to the voice of the customer, understand the root causes of issues (within networks, IT systems, operations, or organizational structures), and recommend corrective actions.
Once the voice of the customer has been captured and analyzed, we help operators act proactively — not only responding to issues raised but also preventing service degradation before it affects customers. Our approach enables operators to build the technical, operational, organizational, and human capabilities required to address critical dissatisfaction points and embed continuous experience improvement into the company culture.
How do you see the future of CEM?
DL: I see a clear acceleration in how seriously this topic is taken and its impact on business development and growth.
Two years ago, CEM was a concept. Today, more and more CEM solutions are available — particularly from equipment providers.
This evolution is closely tied to the digitalization of companies, which is increasingly disintermediating the brand from the customer.
I see this as the convergence of a desire to place CEM at the heart of organizations and to turn it into a new field for Big Data exploitation — not just for marketing, but also for service quality. How can we extract relevant data from across networks, services, and IT systems to focus on different customer segments and understand the root causes of pain points?
Big Data will increasingly be used to measure customer experience in real time: telecom network data will be combined with CRM and even social media insights.
Putting CEM at the heart of the organization is not only a powerful retention driver — economically critical for operators facing OTT competition and business model pressures — it’s also a business opportunity in its own right.
