At Deutsche Telekom we put people front and center, especially our customers and our employees. We examine our workflows from our customers’ perspective and invest in our employees’ expertise as well as in IT tools for them and our customers. Our aim is to handle customer inquiries quickly and fully right from the first contact and to be perceived as friendly and reliable as we do so. In the reporting year, our investments in the area of customer service and the associated customer satisfaction were rewarded: in 2023, we made it into the top 10 most valuable brands in the world in the "Brand Finance Global 500" study. We also remain the most valuable corporate brand in Europe. The Brand-Z study by Kantar also confirmed that Deutsche Telekom is the most valuable German brand - partly due to the high level of trust customers place in our brand.
The following examples show how we implement our service offering in the Germany segment 
:
Very active service in 2023
In 2023 in Germany, we had a total of 30 000 employees providing service to our 60 million mobile and fixed-network customers, making a total of 60 million personal contacts in the process. We solve around 70 percent of inquiries in the first customer contact. Also in the year under review, callers to our service hotline had to wait less than 90 seconds on average to speak with a service representative. In the same year, the percentage of service technician appointments that failed to take place was 0.6 percent. Our good service is paying off: Since 2017, we have been able to cut the number of customer complaints in Germany by a total of 90 percent.
Arranging appointments with Deutsche Telekom
The online appointment booking tool (only available in German) is an easy way for customers to book their consultations and service appointments. They can decide for themselves in which form they would like to receive advice. They can choose between a consultation in a Telekom Shop or at home. Deutsche Telekom engineer appointments can also be booked online. Customers can also use the tool to arrange an appointment for queries which can be resolved via phone call or video chat.
Customers using the “Mein Telekom Techniker” (My Telekom Engineer) app can see with a tap on their smartphone when they can expect our service engineers to arrive. They will also be sent a text message in advance, reminding them of the scheduled visit. This message includes a link to access virtually real-time updates on the engineer’s anticipated arrival time. If customers’ plans suddenly change, they can reschedule appointments with just a few taps on their phone. And once a job is underway, it is also possible to monitor the service engineer’s progress step by step. This can be helpful, for example, when excavation work is required.
Always available – even in the crisis
We also reacted swiftly after Russia began its war of aggression against Ukraine in early 2022: On top of their day-to-day work, our sales and service employees helped out with initiatives such as distributing free SIM cards to refugees at the Telekom Shops and central points of contact – sometimes even outside of their working hours. They were on hand to respond to any questions or issues from refugees. Employees have joined forces to coordinate various relief measures and are continuing this work together.
Customer service from the region for the region
We have established a total of 14 regional centers, known as “Regiocenters,” in major cities in Germany, with the last opening in April 2022. These centers’ service teams serve customers’ needs throughout their regions, including customers in both urban and rural areas. Each such center offers a full range of service expertise and products in the region, from back-office support and technical customer service to field service, shops, and equipment. Customer calls are automatically forwarded to the relevant Regiocenter, which will be able to directly handle all types of concerns – mobile network, fixed network, service disruption, or a field service request.
Promoting skills
We continuously provide our service employees with training on products and services. They can learn about and try out the latest solutions in specially equipped rooms at our service centers. We have also intensified our personal coaching by team leaders in everyday work. Knowledge databases and digital tools are enabling our employees to address customers' concerns more and more quickly.
The high quality of our services has been independently verified by numerous successes in tests. For example, in 2023 the business magazine Focus Money once again honored us as a “Service King.” For its awards, Focus Money conducted a survey of almost 300 000 people, asking which companies they thought gave them the best service. Awards such as these show that we are on the right track. You can find details of other awards for Sales & Service here.
Improving contact and process quality
We want to give all customers the best service experience. To meet that goal, several million responses from our customers are annually collected and analyzed by our quality management team. Customer satisfaction and resolving their request on first contact are our top priorities.
Our surveys are conducted either directly after a contact (for example, via the hotline, in a shop, on a field service call, or after an online inquiry by email or chat) or a completed process (for example, after service provisioning).
If a customer tells us in a survey that their request has not yet been resolved, a callback offer is made to clarify the request once and for all. The results of customer surveys are also used for internal training of our customer advisors.
In the year under review, we managed to increase the Net Promoter Score (NPS), which we use to measure customer satisfaction, to 40 (23 in the prior year). The classification uses a scale of -100 to +100. We attribute the improvement to our “Green-to-Magenta” transformation program and various measures designed to increase customer satisfaction: For instance to the increase in the first-call resolution rate from 56.1 percent in 2022 to 69 percent in the year under review and to the reduction of the waiting times to an average 90 seconds at present. We have also driven forward the training of our employees and the Day-1 attitude that requires our employees to constantly examine processes and workflows for the need for optimization.
