Telia Norway has seen an increase in roaming traffic since introducing free roaming in all EU countries and Switzerland. More usage means subscribers also put higher demands on their user experience while abroad. Telia used to have a somewhat reactive approach when handling subscribers abroad with network data coming from different sources without a clear overview of roaming stats.
By implementing Subtonomy Roamers, Telia Norway has been able to improve the user experience for their roaming subscribers while the work of handling roaming traffic has been made more efficient internally.
Overall improved roaming user experience
Number of complaint calls was reduced by 80%
Investigation time for roaming cases was reduced by 90%
About Telia Norway
Telia Norway is a nationwide Norwegian mobile operator with more than 2.6M subscribers. It is part of Telia Group, founded back in 1853 and today serving 23.5M subscriptions in Europe and Asia.
Challenge
In March 2016 Telia, as the first operator in Norway, launched their “Roam like home” offer, allowing subscribers to roam freely without extra charge in the Nordic and Baltic countries. In June 2017 the free roaming was expanded to cover all EU countries and Switzerland, in line with the new EU regulations. This meant an increase in roaming traffic for Telia, both in terms of users and volume of data per user. This new behavior also put new demands on Telia. With customers starting to use their devices the same way abroad as at home meant they also expected a similar user experience abroad. Managing the user experience of roamers was historically done rather reactively. Faults in a particular country were picked up if enough roaming users in that country started complaining. It was also difficult to get an instant overview of all roaming trends for different countries since data needed to be gathered and aggregated from different places.
Solution
The Subtonomy Roamers application was implemented in July 2017 to handle the user experience for Telia Norway’s outbound roamers (subscribers traveling abroad) and inbound roamers (visitors in Norway). This allowed Telia to view all roamers per country and operator. KPI:s and trends could be monitored in real-time to capture potential issues proactively. It also allowed Telia to monitor all silent roamers as well as potential permanent roamers.
Carl Erik Engebakken – Market Expert at Telia Norway, says:
“We are very happy with how we work with Roamers. We use it every day, mainly for KPI:s and trends. It allows us a real-time overview of our roamers and the ability to respond proactively to potential roaming issues, leading to an enhanced customer experience and also a more efficient way of working for us.”
Results
Since implementing Subtonomy Roamers, Telia is able to proactively work on service performance issues. While before, they would wait for customers to complain before starting trouble-shooting, a process that could easily take 30min or more, it is now done directly. A specific example of this is when a CSP in one of the major western European countries had issues during the Summer of 2017. Calls could not be set up properly and Telia could see KPI:s going down for that CSP in real-time as well as how many of their subscribers were affected. A traffic redirection moving all subscribers to the other CSP:s in the country was then done.
Roaming reports and dashboards are now also generated automatically in an instant, something that before could take hours when manually gathered and put together from different systems. This has led to a much more effective way of working, but the overall gain is how it drives improved user experience. Both on a network level since issues are noted and analyzed directly, but also when customers are in contact with support since the availability of these reports has increased the rate with which roaming issues can be solved while the customer is on the line, without the need for escalations.
Andreas Jörbeck – CEO at Subtonomy, says:
“The overall roaming behavior is really changing globally and it’s clear CSP:s need to start thinking of foreign partner networks almost as an extension of their own. Working with Telia Norway on this has been extremely interesting and together we have managed to lift the user experience for their roaming subscribers while also automating a lot of their internal work, making it a win on many levels. While working together, I think it’s especially fun to see how Telia constantly(!) keep their end-users in mind when evaluating different functionalities.“
Subtonomy provides intuitive machine learning software for Communications Service Providers for increased customer experience. The company is headquartered in Stockholm with sales office in Dubai and is working with telecom customers globally. More information about Subtonomy and its offerings can be found at www.subtonomy.com or by contacting media@subtonomy.com.