Orange invests in customer technology

Orange has moved to sharpen up the quality of its customer service capability by installing a new voice recognition system to improve its platform for resolving customer problems over the telephone, part of a £100m investment in improving its customer service.

Customer service has become an increasingly significant issue for telecoms companies, particularly in the broadband sector where companies including Carphone Warehouse's TalkTalk and Orange have been criticised by consumer groups for poor service.

Mike Hughes, a customer services executive at Orange, said consumer expectations were very high for mobile services. "It is one of, if not the, key differentiator," Mr Hughes said, citing increasing mobile sophistication for increasing call volumes.

As a result, Orange is looking to upgrade its customer service systems that Mr Hughes described as "not fit for purpose".

Orange has added 1,000 customer service agents over the past year and has turned its attention to the underlying platforms that route incoming calls.

Mr Hughes said that the company was in the process of integrating its broadband and mobile customer service functions following the re-branding of the Wanadoo business under the Orange banner and the introduction of free broadband for high-spending mobile phone subscribers.

The company has invested in a new call-routing system to ensure customers are connected promptly.

Orange is also investing in a voice-recognition system so that customers calling in can identify a specific issue, rather than selecting from a series of options that may not address their problem. The new system, which is used by National Express in the UK, was tested last Christmas when 80,000 calls were handled.

The system will be deployed across Orange's customer service platform in the last quarter of the year.

Mr Hughes said that the company was still likely to bolster its 6,700 customer services staff over the coming year although the new system would make the system more efficient by resolving some calls without agent intervention.

Mr Hughes said the company "still has an awful lot of work to do" integrating its broadband and mobile customer service platforms, but challenged recent criticism by uSwitch, the price comparison service, which put Orange at the bottom of its customer service survey. He said, for example, the average call-handling time for its premium service was less than five minutes, not the 17 minutes quoted by uSwitch.

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