Sky Improves Its Business Results Through Digital Twin

Recently we shared the success story of Italian telecommunications company H3G as they used WITNESS, with the expertise of Lanner partner Studio Zeta, to redesign their Customer Care Centre operations. Facing similar challenges of maintaining superior customer service levels in the face of increased demand, Sky Italia S.r.l. made the decision to harness the power of predictive simulation as they looked to reposition their customer service teams.

Sky had three clear objectives for their Customer Care Centre:

• To increase the quality of customer service
• To increase commercial capacity with a significant increase in turnover
• To reduce costs by increasing the efficiency of retaining customers

With nearly 5 million Italian families subscribed to its services, over 5,500 employees and 20 million contacts in their system, Sky’s Customer Care Centre was quite complex and any change to the system could create unpredictable and expensive consequences. To take the risk out of restructuring their Customer Care Centre, they turned to predictive simulation and Studio Zeta to assist in building an operating model that would allow them to experiment and ask “what-if” questions in a risk-free environment.

The first step was to build a predictive digital twin of their current operating state using WITNESS Simulation Software. With this asset available to them, they could then experiment with countless scenarios without ever disturbing existing operations.

Sky hypothesised that re-positioning the Customer Care team into four segments would be the most effective in achieving the objectives they had defined. The four proposed segments were:

• Commercial
• Prevention
• Retention
• Technical Service

Each segment had specific targets that supported the overall objectives of the Customer Care Centre. It was thought that operators in each segment could better serve their customer base with specialised knowledge and resources, with additional ad-hoc resources available to them as required.

With predictive simulation, Sky was able to test the four-segment proposition using six possible scenarios and over 250 experiments, validating their Customer Care objectives and ensuring future performance targets would be met.

Today, Sky has one of the most advanced and efficient operating models on the Italian market.

"We have certainly achieved very positive results since the system was fully implemented. When compared to the previous system the results were very positive both at strategic and operational levels.

Commercial retention levels doubled in the year following the release of the operating model, customer satisfaction grew by 5 points and the one-call-solution measurement improved by eight percent.

We will rely on Studio Zeta and WITNESS simulation again should we need to review this solution’s performance in the future.”

-Federico Ferlenghi - Customer Care Director