The first assessment focused on the company’s consumer business unit together with the corporate business unit. Vodafone Netherlands achieved a very creditable overall score in their first assessment, which clarified what ‘customer centricity’ meant to the organisation and described what it would ‘feel’ like on a day-to-day basis for staff in the business. Five key recommendations surfaced, all documented in a comprehensive report and feedback workshop with the executive team:

1. Adopt a systemic approach to customer experience to make Vodafone NL “best at the basics”
2. Improve cost-to-serve and cost-to-acquire
3. Blueprint customer experience using journey mapping to define physical process
4. Adopt customer segmentation model to drive better targeting for retention, cross-sell and up-sell
5. Better use of data – across the organisation

• The assessors used structured and focused interviews with a true cross-section of staff alongside observation techniques; conducting detailed content reviews of the evidence supplied
• The current reality of experience delivery was assessed and full account was taken of programmes and plans already in place (breadth and depth of implementation)
• Vodafone Netherlands was then scored on each of the good practices that sit beneath the model. This scoring was compared against sector benchmarks and 2012’s scores to create a true and accurate reflection of progress made
• ‘Gaps-to-benchmark’ were pinpointed, and the underlying issues identified.
• Workshops were conducted with key stakeholders to determine the level of ‘customer centricity’ that Vodafone Netherlands aspired to
• Further practical recommendations were made following, prioritised for gaps to desired state and gaps to benchmarks

The reassessment confirmed that Vodafone Netherlands had significantly improved by implementing the 2012 recommendations. It rated the company well above the overall average and higher than the sector as a whole. This places them solidly in the upper quartile of global customer management practice, but still with a way to go towards the very best practice benchmark.

• Revenue market share growth of 1.3%
• Mobile data growth of 40% (market grew 33%)
• Maintenance of their top NPS scorer status in their marketisector: 2-point gap to next best
• A staff engagement index of 75 (six points above target)

Capability change doesn’t happen overnight, so a reassessment was scheduled for 18 months later (end of 2013). The assessment team was given the challenge of fairly and accurately assessing the progress made across the business in the interim period as well as looking more deeply into the B2B capabilities of the company.

CAA^® is built upon the three fundamental pillars of ‘good practice’ B2B customer management; Trust, Interdependence and Equitability.

The CAA^® model outlines the business system of B2B customer management:

Knowledge – Strategy – Planning – Implementation – Results

Working on three levels:

1. Operating in and developing your market
2. Managing account relationships
3. Organising resources and operations

It provides companies with a structure and framework from which to build their customer management programmes. It also provides a way to benchmark performance against ‘good practice’ and ‘best-in-class’ companies within and across industries.

The team conducted a formal, evidence based, quantified capability reassessment of Vodafone Netherlands on two major sites:

The reassessment was presented to the board in January 2014, which included a workshop of nine key areas for further improvement. Four of these were prioritised for significant attention and progress to be made through to the end of 2015.

• Recommendations:Customer Joumey-based information Plans
• Insight-led Planning E Operations
• Agility E Customer Effort Programme
• Organisation-wide Journey Management
• Activation E Early Experience Management
• Proactive Loyalty Management
• Enhanced Customer Value Management (CVM)
• Best at B2B
• Cost-to-serve and Acquire Management

We look forward to the next reassessment to accredit progress and inform the next stage.