Q&A with Jolanta Dudek, Vice-President in charge of the Consumer Market

Q: How is your distribution network evolving? How important is omnichannel?

The quality of our sales and distribution network is one of the essential factors to the success of our strategy. This network is constantly evolving for two primary reasons. Firstly, it is changing in line with the needs and preferences of our customers. Secondly, we are constantly looking for ways to improve our own efficiency. I would say that mastering the omnichannel strategy is critical for achieving those goals.

Let’s start with defining ‘omnichannel’.

The customer has a choice of different channels through which to contact us, ranging from various digital channels to contacting our call centre or visiting our physical point of sale. Omnichannel integrates these channels to provide continuity and connectivity across all of them. This allows customers to move freely between channels without experiencing interruptions or having to repeat context from interactions on previous channels. In short, it provides a single, consistent customer journey, no matter how the customer chooses to make contact.

Q: Why is omnichannel more critical now than ever?

Nobody will be surprised that, as technological changes influence the behaviour of consumers, the importance of digital channels in growing. That is obvious. But it is only part of the story. Higher usage of digital usually means customer interactions in other channels. A clear trend in consumer behaviour is ROPO (research online, purchase offline), which means that a consumer searches the Internet for information about a product and then purchases the item in a physical store. Or vice versa. According to market research, in Poland this trend is responsible for around 50% of purchases. This is in line with our own observations. With Orange Polska, more than 40% of buyers use two or more sales channels during the sales process. Moreover, while the number of users of the MyOrange application is constantly and dynamically growing, the number of contacts with human channels in the customer journey is not decreasing. This all means that distribution channels are more and more interrelated and we have to adjust our processes and strategy to fit into these changing customer preferences. We have to be where our customers want to meet us.

Q: How do we master our omnichannel strategy?

I would say that digital thinking has to be in the centre of customer interactions in all distribution channels. Obviously we focus strongly on the development of digital, boosting usage of the My Orange application and improving our website and online store. By 2024 we want every fourth sales transaction to take place online. Our points-of-sale network has been evolving in recent years and the changes will continue going forward. Their role is changing but their importance is not. They are increasingly becoming show rooms, especially in big cities, having highly functional design and visualisation supported by IT tools. We are thinking of introducing even more technology, like artificial intelligence, to provide live demonstration of products and improve the customer journey.

The future is also in self-service. The physical points-ofsale network is expensive to run and maintain. That’s why in transforming our network we put a lot of effort towards making optimal decisions regarding location, surface and number of consultants. We use advanced geo-spatial models to support us in these decisions. Along with the growing popularity of various digital tools the relative importance of telesales is declining. However we are also working on a better synchronisation between this channel and online. At the same time we are very much aware that not all our customer groups are open for digital channels. Poland’s population is ageing and so are our customers. Our elderly customers prefer direct human contact and this is also an important part of our strategy. Omnichannel is our way to deliver a human and digital best-in-class customer experience on every stage on the customer journey