eBuilder and leading Swedish phone operator Telia have developed a platform that detects when devices are about to fail, potentially saving the company thousands of pounds in customer service costs, plus increasing its customer satisfaction score.
Developed by eBuilder, but rolled out to Telia’s customers, the technology uses machine learning to uncover problems with equipment faster, which it thinks will reduce the number of customer calls to its service centre, currently costing the company between £4.50 and £10 a pop. It also gives Telia the opportunity to start servicing devices that need fixing too, jumping onboard the highly fragmented £190m device repair market.
After launching the app earlier this year, Telia said 100,000 of its customers have downloaded the app so far, although the firm doesn’t think it’ll be long until its entire 6 million mobile customers will start using it when they realise they are able to find out when their phone is about to die.
User engagement with the brand has significantly improved since the customers who have downloaded the app have used it. Figures released by the companies explained around 67% of people who receive notifications about their device’s health through the app have engaged, which is three times the average fro such an app.
“It’s too early to say we’ve seen clear proof of decreased costs,” Telia’s product and commercial director Gustav Berghog said when asked how much the company has saved from the app’s use. “But when this is industrialized and within our automated marketing systems I see possibilities — we need to scale it more before we see more.”
Telia explained it’s also seeing customers of other networks downloading the app, which could be a way for the company to find more customers for their device repair business.
“Exclusivity right now is more about the Telia investment and that was always part of the strategy,” says eBuilder CEO Leif Bohlin told Light Reading. “We needed an anchor customer to start with and in that case we didn’t see any problems because the operator market is global and there are enough [potential customers] out there.”
