Customer loyalty

Customers are our raison d’être

Without customers, there would be no KPN. That’s why their opinion is of paramount importance to us in our customer satisfaction and customer loyalty policies. We monitor customer loyalty permanently through our own surveys and the image created in public opinion and the media. This shows us what improvements we need to make.

An important measure is the Net Promoter Score (NPS). This indicator measures customer loyalty: we regularly ask a large number of customers how probable it is, on a scale of 1 to 10, that they will recommend KPN to others. This generates a score at the brand and market segment level. We use this figure because, in our experience, customer loyalty is a good indicator of stable growth. Our experience tells us that customers, both potential and current, allow themselves to be influenced by the recommendations and experiences of existing customers when it comes to choosing brands and products. The rise of social media sites and web sites where consumers share their experiences reinforces the phenomenon.

We have set up the NPS Board, composed of the business directors of KPN Nederland, to ensure unremitting focus on improving customer loyalty. This steering committee ensures that this is done in a consistent, structural fashion. We use the Net Promoter Scores, which are discussed with the responsible line managers, to manage our customer loyalty. We consider customer loyalty so important, that the NPS scores form part of the bonuses both of senior managers and of employees.

Our NPS targets

KPN wants to be the loyalty leader in all the product segments and markets we serve in the Netherlands.

In the consumer market, we are active with our KPN, Hi, Telfort and XS4ALL brands on six individual markets: fixed-line telephony, Internet, ET, postpaid mobile, prepaid mobile and mobile data. In the business market, we offer entrepreneurs, the SME and large business segments fixed-line telephony, mobile telephony, internet, mobile data and fixed-line data.

In 2010, we became loyalty leader in 13 of the 24 product-market segments.1 Despite the fact that we failed to achieve our targets, the number of product-market segments in which we are the loyalty leader increased. Our loyalty leadership in the business market rose by two product-market segments and the consumer market by as many as three product-market segments in comparison with 2009.

Our target for 2011 is to achieve an improvement of 8 percentage points in the NPS brand measurement score compared to 2010. For the business market, this applies only to the KPN brand. For the consumer market, it is based on the weighted average of sales of the KPN, Hi, Telfort and XS4ALL brands. We also aim to be loyalty leader in 16 of the 25 product-market combinations of the Dutch consumer and business markets in 2011.

¹ The results differ from those shown in the Sustainability Report 2010 because more up-to-date results are now available.

Learning from the customer

KPN measures the NPS at various levels: in terms of brand and product (comparing ourselves with our competitors), in terms of specific customer events (delivery, service, complaint settlement and invoicing) and in terms of contact moments. For the last two levels, we use the closed-loop feedback approach (CLF).

CLF makes it possible to gage what a KPN customer thinks, how he or she evaluates an event or a conversation, and why. Any still unsolved customer problems are then solved. We also look, based on the customer’s input, at what improvements are possible and how we can make them, both at process and product level, and at employee level.

KPN is currently developing a uniform process for obtaining and utilizing customer feedback for all the channels, customer events and contact moments. We will then be able to take stock of and analyze the feedback on a structural basis throughout the chain, from sale to invoicing. This process give better insight into what the customer thinks of our service and how we can improve our quality even more on the basis of customer feedback.

In this way, KPN can continue to improve on the basis of information from its most important source: the customer.