Customer value is all about the perception customers have of the benefits they gain from using our solutions. Creating value for customers is, therefore, not necessarily about delivering a feature, but more about learning how to meet customers' needs with complete solutions.
This starts by listening to customers’ needs, pain points and aspirations to understand how these are evolving, so we can anticipate their future requirements.
But that is not enough. Listening to our customers makes sense if we can respond and deliver what they need. That is real value but I strongly believe that the essence of a happy customer starts with good listening and ends with strong delivery.
Learn to create value
By talking with our customers, we learned that their requirements are in four key areas: Connectivity, Quality, Automation and Security.
50019The first requirement unsurprisingly is ‘connectivity’ at all times, but this is alone is not enough: they also expect their connectivity to be delivered with high quality and reliability. We hear this daily, from our IP transit customers and also in the CDN segment.
Customers increasingly value security and fraud prevention and during the recent crisis, we have seen several new security issues emerge, as well as a growth of fraud in some existing areas such as spamming and voice by-pass. So, there is clearly a growing need in this area.
Recent events have also triggered an acceleration of requirements for automation and self-serve networks and solutions. At Orange, we were able to continue service delivery during the lockdown period as a result of our processes and systems already in place.
Agility and automation must be end-to-end, both on the network side, and also commercially. End-to-end commercial improvements are still ongoing and we are working closely with our partners to make this a reality across our portfolio.
Great execution is the ultimate differentiator
Knowing what our customers want is a good start, but responding and delivering on those requirements is the key. Firstly, security is in our DNA. It is part of the Orange brand identity. We bring security to all of our services and this is core to our entire portfolio strategy. We make security and anti-fraud available everywhere for as many customers as possible. This enables them not only to protect themselves from the attacks, but also to better monetize their assets, so we remain at the forefront of the fight against fraud.
Another reason we deliver high value is because we are part of a group. Orange has B2C operations in 26 countries in addition to a strong B2B business. We understand what end consumers and enterprise users want, and we can therefore better support our customers to create value for their own customers.
Our third differentiator is the ongoing Orange activities on network automation and simplification of usage. We already offer several products online, from ordering to delivery, and we are seeing an increasing appetite for this. For example, we launched ‘OTI online’, which is IP Transit order online and we are continuing to work with some of our partners to develop our capabilities around automation and simplification in order to offer a wider reach to our customers.
Another differentiator, which is very important for Orange, is Africa. We operate strategic assets in the region with our West African Backbone, Djoliba, which will be live in a few months, interconnecting 8 countries, and we also have the most extensive CDN network in Africa.
Finally, we are fostering partnerships across the value chain with other carriers and also with our customers and vendors. Through these types of partnerships we are increasingly able to offer innovative voice, messaging and roaming outsourcing solutions. For instance, we recently partnered with PLDT in the Philippines to manage their international voice business. We feel that when we share the workload with our customers, it increases the value for all the stakeholders.
The best is yet to come
Looking forward, the best is yet to come in our value creation capabilities. In the next six months, we will bring our customers more simplicity, more connectivity, more digital and more customer satisfaction.
When it comes to enabling more simplicity, in the short term we will focus on our current portfolio revamp project. Our aim is to repackage solutions to mirror our customers’ needs and make them simpler. Our commercial campaign realigns our entire product lines to offer three levels of service: Essential, Dynamic and Intense.
For connectivity, we have ongoing plans to extend our network reach. The Dunant submarine cable, will connect the US and France and will come into service at the end of 2020, and by 2021 we will have the PEACE cable to connect Europe, Asia and East Africa. Finally, to improve quality, we continue to extend our reach in order to get closer to customers and we will open a number of new PoPs across the world and new switches in Africa and Asia.
Digital is now more important than ever, so we are continuing our transformation with the launch of our new website, to bring together our communication, the customer portal and our online shop. This will provide an integrated digital customer experience.
Finally, we will continue our customer satisfaction program, with an updated ‘Customer service pledge’, which will include new, more detailed, customer value commitments.
We are focusing this next year on our transformation to ensure that customer value creation is at the core of everything we do. To achieve this, we are ensuring that our whole organization is as passionate about delivering value as it is about listening to our customers.
