Retain and grow existing customer base by increasing call completion.
Done.
A new free service that generates additional revenue through customer satisfaction.
Growing the Customer Base
BT already offered its customers a telephone answering service through BT Call Minder. This was – and remains – a highly successful personalized, premium telephone answering service costing £6 (US$10) a quarter. Customers benefit from a host of features, such as being able to leave a personal message or redirect calls to cell phones.
But the company wanted to encourage even more customers to complete their calls by offering a free service. It created the concept of BT Answer, a basic answering service with no special features. Customers would simply dial 1571 to receive messages but could not personalize the service.
Free Service Adds Value
Nigel Fisher, head of Core Propositions, Retail Consumer Division, BT, says that BT Answer was conceived to grow core revenue. Its long running service, BT Call Minder, had 1.5 million customers and BT wanted to retain these as well as generating a new customer base.
He says: "We developed a basic, free messaging service, BT Answer, that would increase call completion and add value to the line for customers. We knew from our research that 99 percent of customers already rated the BT Call Minder service as good or better. And 97 percent said they were happy to recommend the service to a friend."
As Unisys had worked extensively with BT on developing the BT Call Minder service, it was a natural partner for the new BT Answer project.
Fisher explains: "We have to work with companies that can deliver and Unisys fits the bill -they have been a strategic partner since 2001. We need organizations that have the complementary skills that enable us to move forward together.
"Customer satisfaction is very important to us and evangelism is extremely important when considering launching a new product. There were two sides to our strategy. By providing the BT Answer service free to customers, they would benefit from a new service and we would generate additional revenue through increased levels of call completion."
Teamwork
In just six months, Unisys wrote the software for BT Answer and upgraded the Unisys ClearPath Server, which was previously supporting BT Call Minder. Unisys replaced these servers with just nine ClearPath servers, supporting 250,000 mailboxes per platform. During the course of the project the need for subsequent servers was identified, and another three were purchased. In addition to this, the nine original ClearPath servers were upgraded to handle upwards of 800,000 mailboxes per platform, providing BT with the capability to support a total of 10 million mailboxes.
Fisher recalls: "Unisys was involved at the outset of the project, planning and designing the free service, deciding on a pilot project and advising on how to implement and roll out the entire service. The consultants were outstanding at every stage. The company had implemented similar projects for companies such as Telefonica in Spain. This was absolutely crucial to the success of the project, because the consultants shared the information and knowledge they had gained from working on other projects."
