The Challenge
When it came to customer satisfaction with the clarity of mobile phone bills, T-Mobile was the worst in its market. This meant that bill-related queries were the most common reason for customers to call T-Mobile, queries that were often unnecessary. Contemporary mobile phone usage, and increasingly complex price plans, meant that communicating billing information had become a challenge. Not only had competitor Vodafone raised the bar with a significant redesign in 2005, but bill clarity had become a key focus of the mobile phone regulator.
The Brief
Boag Associates were commissioned to work with TMW to redesign and maintain a new consumer bill that aimed to see customer satisfaction with the clarity of the bill increase by 10 percentage points within 12 months, and a reduction in unnecessary bill-related helpline calls that would enable T-Mobile to reduce the number of full time customer service employees by 18%. The brief also aimed to make its bill a key part of the customer’s brand experience.
The Design Boag Associates developed written content for the bill and recommendations on structure and content use. TMW carried out the brand design implementation and obtained customer feedback. Both consultancies then generated specifications and designs to cover all bill types. Key changes included presenting an account summary on the first page, showing allowance usage as graphs, and dividing listing into ‘within’ and ‘outside’ allowances to help customers see what they are being charged for. The brand is also brought to life on the bill using language, colour and imagery.
The Results
With a design budget of £150,000 (Euro 220,500) and an IT and implementation budget of £1.1million (Euro1.61million), the new bill was launched on 14 November 2006, and after three months new customers calling the helpline with bill-related queries had reduced from 31% to 22%. T-Mobile has reduced the headcount employed in customer services by 28 full-time equivalents. Moving the address to the top of the page has enabled T-Mobile to use standard envelopes, and the new bill also uses space across the pages more efficiently. The number of customers who are extremely or very satisfied with the bill clarity is already on course to meet the target of 55% by November 2007.
