Ice Norway Enhances Customer Care and Boosts Sales with Freshdesk Integration

Ice Norway is the third-largest mobile telecom operator in Norway. The company launched in 2009 with its own mobile broadband network for the business market. After winning the frequency auction from Tele2, it started offering services to consumers from 2016. Since then, the company has grown rapidly, becoming the strongest-growing mobile network operator in Europe. It has also won several customer service awards. Ice Norway's growth objective is to expand its current 10 percent market share to 25 percent. The company believes in a customer-centric culture and aims to combine strong growth with high customer contact ratings.

Ice Norway, the third-largest mobile telecom operator in Norway, was facing a challenge in managing its customer care operations. The company had outsourced parts of its customer contact activity to different external parties, each using their own software. This resulted in a fragmented view of their three key performance indicators (KPIs): average handling time for each task, the hit rate (sales from an identified group of prospects), and the customer satisfaction score (CSAT). The company was struggling to strike a balance between reducing handling time and increasing sales through cross-selling and up-selling. They also wanted to maintain a high CSAT, which they believed was crucial for long-term growth. To achieve their growth objective of expanding their market share from 10 percent to 25 percent, they realized the need to integrate their three most-used customer contact channels: telephone, chat, and email.

Ice Norway chose Freshdesk to integrate all its customer contact channels into one system. Freshdesk allowed the company to measure CSAT across all channels, where it used to only be measured on calls. It also revealed the relationship between handling time and the hit rate. With Freshdesk, Ice Norway could start steering integrally, discovering the value of keeping customers on the phone a little longer. The software also helped reduce the manual effort arising from customer questions, giving agents more time to deal with customers. The company was able to gain new data-backed insights, such as the fact that while chat was a highly efficient and valued channel, it did not benefit the hit rate. The contact center agents were excited about the insights revealed by integrated cross-channel measurement and started suggesting ideas for further performance improvement. The team could implement these improvements largely on their own, without any help from the IT department.

• The integration of Freshdesk into Ice Norway's operations has led to several operational benefits. The company has been able to gain a comprehensive view of its three KPIs and understand how they interrelate. This has allowed them to strike a balance between reducing handling time and increasing sales. The software has also helped them reduce manual effort, giving agents more time to deal with customers. The company has gained new insights, such as the fact that while chat is a highly efficient channel, it does not benefit the hit rate. This has led to a more data-driven approach to customer care. The contact center agents have been excited about the insights revealed by integrated cross-channel measurement and have started suggesting ideas for further performance improvement. The team has been able to implement these improvements largely on their own, without any help from the IT department. This has led to a sense of ownership and involvement among the agents, contributing to a positive work culture.