The telecom industry has witnessed — and will continue to do so — an almost unbelievable amount of innovation in the past several years, driven by a combination of new features and capabilities enabled by IP Communications solutions and a cost effective alternative to legacy deployments. Of late, the emphasis has shifted largely to cost savings, as companies look to cut their expenses in a struggling economy. 

 

But, the one thing that has always remained constant — and remains the key driver to business success overall — is customer satisfaction. At the end of the day, regardless of how big you business, and how large or small your budget, your driving focus is the deployment of technology that will best enable your staff to serve your customers. The relationship between customer satisfaction and the business success can hardly be understated.

 

So, when you consider analyst firm Telemark Services’ report on global VPN customer experience, it’s patently obvious that BT — it’s Global Service division, in particular — is going it right. In achieving scores Telemark says are the highest it has ever recorded, BT (News - Alert) has been ranked atop the customer satisfaction index of global VPN providers. In fact, Telemark calls the results achieved by BT “a new world record for overall customer satisfaction.”

 

Janet Watkin, Director of Telemark, notes that, “The Platinum Award presented to BT acknowledges BT’s success in capturing the hearts and minds of customers with excellence and ahead of global rivals.”

 

While the level of success may seem surprising, it shouldn’t be, given BT Global Services’ focus on improving the customer experience, particularly with the goal of eliminating the need for customer service calls by delivering solutions effectively from the outset.

 

“We’ve made good progress towards our objective; it's great to see that our customers are also recognizing our efforts,” said Hanif Lalani, CEO of BT Global Services (News - Alert).

 

The results of the survey, which included responses from 682 large enterprises and multinational businesses, support Lalani’s ideals of customer service: focusing on what matters to the customer, fostering relationships and building trust, and ensuring two-way communication to further ensure satisfaction after the initial purchase and deployment.

 

Of course, these are ideals any successful business aspires to attain, and it takes more than a desire — it requires an investment in people and technology.

 

The results speak for themselves, however. BT claims its network availability consistently is above 99.98 percent. It also provides IT services to 80 percent of the FTSE 100 firms and 60 percent of the Fortune 500 companies.

 

It also has built its service offerings on the back of relationships with many of the world’s leading telecom vendors, including Alcatel-Lucent for integrating its legacy and CN21 networks, Cisco’s ASR 1000 Series Aggregation Services Routers, Nortel’s (News - Alert) VPN router line. BT’s commitment to using best-of-breed technologies to provide the most effective solutions is undoubtedly a factor in its successful singing of many global customers — and delivering the services they need.