The work of the Creation Center, a small, creative, international and interdisciplinary unit that applies 'innovathinking' consistently in the R&D process of Deutsche Telekom, is introduced in this presentation. As in other competitive markets, a Telco operator can only survive with outstanding products and services that -to keep it very simple- help customers in their daily lives that are easy to use and perfectly fit into existing device- service-ecosystems. Therefore the Creation Center sets the starting point for innovation right in the living rooms of customers.
The use of Information and Communication Technology (henceforth ICT) products and services varies to a considerable degree. There are users who devour any innovation and would prefer beta versions to challenge both themselves and technology. Other users or target groups abhor such a situation. They experience innovations as overload, change as strain and beta versions as bane of techno. In other words: one person's "benefit" is another person's barrier. Behind it, there are differing value patterns and coping strategies which are decisive for the way ICT products, services and innovations are perceived and integrated into everyday life and thus made blockbusters or (regrettably more often) flops. The study in hand reveals different patterns of use, motivations and barriers and contributes to a deeper understanding of target group specific benefits:barriers. Deutsche Telekom Laboratories uses these findings in order to develop target group appropriate ICT products, services and innovations, to appraise market potentials and to design marketing measures geared to the target groups. The task of market research doesn't end with testing existing things (passive function), but extends to being an integral part of product development, product improvement and marketing optimization. This can (first and foremost) be achieved because we always have our sights on the consumer: we always take the needs of the people as a starting point (bottom up approach).
Product innovations are developed for a future market with future consumers. Engineers and decision makers need to understand both to be successful. The paper shows an empirically based framework which systematically integrates the people dimension of today and tomorrow into the innovation process.The framework includes a psychographic segmentation, socio-cultural ICT (Information and Communication Technology) drivers, ICT consumer scenarios and a web-based tool to calculate and evaluate the market and revenue potential according to the segmentation. It describes the whole framework and how market research results could be translated in the language of managers and decision makers.
In 1993 Deutsche Telekom began to tackle systematically the issue of customer satisfaction. To this end, Deutsche Telekom uses the TRIM system from Infratest AG in Munich. TRIM produces data about customer loyalty and customer satisfaction with Deutsche Telekoms products and services. Currently, we split TRIM into a national and a regional part, but key account and internal parts are also planned. In total, Deutsche Telekom establishes the level of customer satisfaction of approximately 30 customers each year. Each product manager and Branch Office Manager therefore knows how satisfied the customers are with Deutsche Telekoms products and services. As annual data do not always suffice, so-called customer tracking was introduced for the most important service areas. Customer tracking determines the level of satisfaction of our customers with services which have just been provided within two weeks, and at the customers own premises (e.g. installation and fault clearance). For the product division, termination analysis (analysis of reasons for customers terminating services) was introduced, which makes an analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the product and condition mix possible. Internal quality data such as the actual installation and fault clearance times etc. are required in order to incorporate the standard required by our customers. The quality assurance officer has the task of analysing the data available and making appropriate proposals for the improvement of customer loyalty, and for initiating measures. We describe the complete system, consisting of customer satisfaction analysis, customer tracking, termination analysis and quality data, as a Deutsche Telekom AG action-based programme to maintain customer loyalty.