SKY improves customer service with Oracle Field Service

The largest satellite pay TV operator in Brazil, SKY has been in the domestic market since November 1996. The company currently has 4.5 million subscribers in the country, which represents a market share of about 30%.

Brazil is a huge and diverse country. Although nearly 90% of the population lives in urban areas, millions are in small towns and villages, often hundreds of miles from major cities. Thanks to SKY and its mission to democratize data throughout the region, all those homes can be served with satellite services, including prepaid and postpaid TV, movie rentals, video on demand, and satellite radio.

To make this possible, the company currently has 1,500 employees dedicated to internal case management, with another 9,000 employees focused on important initiatives, like improving the customer experience. In addition, SKY has 3,600 business partners located throughout the country, all contracted to carry out critical field service work: installations, maintenance, and technical visits. SKY manages all calls and directs each service engagement. With internal case management, customer support, and field service technicians, this forms a powerful ecosystem of people dedicated to providing exceptional experiences to SKY customers.

However, the company lacked a system that would allow it to track and streamline service appointments across such a broad and far-flung constituency. For example, when a customer contacted SKY requesting technical assistance or a home visit, there was no easy or automated way to schedule the onsite services efficiently based on the customer’s location and the availability of nearby service technicians.

With the aim of improving and managing the company’s relationship with consumers—and optimizing communication with technicians—SKY selected Oracle Field Service, an integrated set of business applications that provides a centralized view and point of control for monitoring field service activities. It is part of the Oracle Advertising and Customer Experience suite of applications.

The main reason the company chose Oracle was Oracle’s reputation for success in the market. “SKY has been looking for companies that are successful because of their robustness in digital transformation and their ability to provide stable platforms. In addition to a good experience, we want to have the possibility of exchanging experiences on how to serve customers better, and how to do it with better quality,” says Karen Santucci, head of planning, sales, and operations at SKY Brasil.

With Oracle Field Service applications integrated into SKY’s infrastructure, the company gained a more effective scheduling process for serving its customers. Now, for example, when a customer requests service via SKY’s website, Oracle Field Service matches the customer’s location with the closest available technician and automatically routes technicians to their assignments. Today the company meets all service requests within 48 hours. The tool is being used by 100% of the company’s authorized network.

With Oracle Field Service, SKY also was able to improve the entire follow-up process with technicians, gaining information that helped the company improve procedures. With the Oracle system, for example, technicians complete an online, on-location follow-up of material withdrawals (recording which supplies, such as spare parts, were required to finish the service). Formerly, service agents had to perform this procedure later with a back-office team.

“Today this is our scenario: We are able to serve our clients quickly, making the most of the resources we have in our network and with our business partners,” says Santucci.