Sky doubles customer retention using predictive simulation

Sky Italia is a media and entertainment company founded in 2003 and part of the Sky Group, one of the leading entertainment groups in Europe. It has over 5,500 employees, and nearly 5 million families subscribe to its services. 

The challenge: Improving customer service in the face of increased demand

Amid increasing pressure on its customer care centre, Sky launched an initiative to restructure operations. There were 3 clear objectives:

• Enhance service quality
• Increase commercial capacity with a significant boost in turnover
• Reduce costs by making customer retention more efficient

With 20 million contacts in the system, the existing structure and processes were quite complex – and any change could have unpredictable and expensive consequences. 

To de-risk the restructuring process, Sky turned to Twinn Witness predictive simulation software (formerly under the Lanner brand) and our Italian partner Studio Zeta. The aim was to build a virtual model of customer care centre operations that would allow them to ask ‘what-if’ questions in a risk-free environment before implementing any changes.

The solution: Using predictive simulation to test proposed operating model changes 

Sky and Studio Zeta modelled current customer care centre operations in Witness. This gave Sky the ability to experiment with potential changes without disturbing existing operations.

Sky hypothesised that the most effective way to achieve their objectives would be to reconfigure the customer care team into 4 segments:

• Commercial
• Prevention
• Retention
• Technical service

The idea was that operators would be able to better serve customers because they’d have specialised knowledge and resources, with additional ad-hoc resources available as required. Each segment would then have specific targets to support the overall objectives. 

Using Witness, Sky tested this hypothesis. In total, they conducted over 250 experiments across 6 scenarios to validate the proposed configuration would achieve their objectives and meet future performance targets.

Impact: 100% increase in customer retention and 8% rise in one-call resolution

The new validated operating model has had impressive results, and Sky now has one of the most advanced and efficient customer care centres in Italy.

Federico Ferlenghi, Customer Care Director at Sky Italia, summed up the impact:

‘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. In the year following the release of the new operating model, commercial retention levels doubled, customer satisfaction grew by 5 points and our one-call resolution measurement improved by 8%.

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