SFR, a French telecommunications provider, serves millions of residential and business customers with mobile, internet, phone, and television services. In an environment where the customer experience depends on numerous business units, touchpoints, and real-world situations, the company has launched a major transformation program called SFR imagine.
Led by senior management, this program aims to improve both the customer experience and the employee experience. To better listen to feedback from the field, SFR has chosen to use the IDhall tool. The initiative covers a particularly broad scope, involving 12,000 employees from a wide range of roles: headquarters, retail stores, customer service, and field teams.
Its goal: to make it easier to share ideas, feedback, and issues encountered on a daily basis, in order to better identify ways to improve the customer experience.
In this customer testimonial, discover how SFR structured its approach to gathering feedback from the field and employees with IDhall, transitioning from scattered feedback to a centralized, transparent, and managed platform. Audrey Hans, currently in charge of managing the SFR imagine platform, and Sébastien Rubaud, who designed and launched the project, share their insights on this collaborative initiative.
Harnessing employee insights to improve the customer experience
SFR imagine was born out of a strong commitment, including, in particular, the goal of empowering every employee to play an active role in improving the customer experience.
Before the platform was launched, several channels already existed for raising issues. However, these channels did not always make it easy for all employees to share their ideas, particularly those with less direct access to customers or decision-makers.
With IDhall, SFR has created a single point of entry. Every employee can share an idea, report a pain point, or suggest an improvement, regardless of their role or position in the organization.
This ambition was championed at the highest levels of the company. Mathieu Cocq, CEO of SFR, and the members of the Executive Committee were key drivers of the initiative and the choice of platform. This strong commitment gave the project special legitimacy from the very start.
Our CEO, Mathieu Cocq, wanted to find a way to make it easier for employees to submit ideas or suggestions for improvement. That was the platform’s original goal.
This openness is essential in a company such as SFR, where customer irritants can be observed at various levels: in stores, in customer service, in the field, at headquarters, and even by employees themselves when they use the company’s services.
Centralizing previously scattered feedback
In the past, people would often use internal networks to raise issues. Employees would pass an issue on to someone they knew, hoping that person would be the right contact, would have time to address the issue, and would provide feedback.
This structure made it difficult to track progress. Some reports moved forward, while others stalled along the way. For employees, the lack of visibility could cause frustration and discourage future contributions.
IDhall has enabled SFR to centralize customer ideas and pain points on a single platform. Feedback is visible, organized, and directed to the right people.
Thanks to IDhall, we finally have a centralized view of all our customers’ irritants. Before using it, some issues might have slipped our attention. Now, we know who to report them to, and they are routed to the right teams.
The platform also allows feedback to be categorized using tags and custom fields. This enables SFR to analyze issues in greater detail, identify their nature, and better assess the reported pain points.
Today, every employee can raise an issue and know that it will be visible, tracked, and addressed.
Structuring idea management with business-unit representatives
Even before the platform launched, SFR had defined the approach and approved its operation at the Executive Committee meeting. The goal was not only to create a system capable of gathering employee ideas, but also to ensure their processing and follow-up over the long term.
To this end, SFR relied on about ten key contacts identified within the company’s major departments. Their role is to review feedback, consult with the appropriate internal stakeholders, provide responses to employees, and ensure that resulting actions move forward.
SFR has also identified a community of volunteer employees associated with the platform. These volunteers, recognized for their expertise, their internal network, and their willingness to help move issues forward, serve as a link to the larger community.
The platform enabled us to identify key contributors who are driven by a desire to move initiatives forward and are capable of implementing the approach on the ground.
This collective effort gives greater weight to feedback from the field and reinforces the idea that everyone can make a tangible contribution to continuous improvement.
The platform gives people a voice and empowers them to speak out. It aligned perfectly with our guiding principle: we are all key players in the customer experience. We all have an idea or feedback to share that can contribute to the bigger picture. IDhall truly makes that possible.
However, this open approach to input requires the ability to absorb, analyze, and follow submitted ideas through to implementation. The success of this initiative therefore also depends on the engagement of internal teams and the ability to effectively address the issues raised.
I recommend this tool, provided it is integrated into a genuine framework for analyzing and leveraging ideas. For this approach to be successful, there must be an internal effort capable of processing the contributions.
Making results visible to sustain engagement
The initiative was accompanied by regular internal communications. From the start, SFR presented the initiative via a webinar, emails, and the intranet, and then shared regular updates to show the Executive Committee and employees that their ideas were being taken into account.
After a year of use, SFR has its first concrete results. The platform was initially structured around two main areas of focus: improving the customer experience and improving employees’ day-to-day experience and efficiency.
Most submissions relate to the first area. The second provides employees with a framework for identifying areas in their daily work that can be simplified, streamlined, or improved.
One year after the platform’s launch, we have received nearly 700 submissions across the two main areas: the vast majority regarding the customer experience and about 100 regarding improvements to the employee experience. Approximately 25% have been implemented, and 25% are currently being implemented.
These results allow SFR to demonstrate that feedback is not ignored. Feedback can be tracked, categorized, and then shared internally to provide visibility into the progress of the initiative.
IDhall reports have also become an important management tool. They provide a clear overview of issues raised, their progress, and the results to be shared internally.
IDhall's reports have become essential to my day-to-day management. They allow me to track the progress of feedback and share the results internally.
The implementation of IDhall was carried out with the support of the Humanperf teams, both in terms of configuring the platform and in terms of how to bring the system to life. For SFR, this support made it possible to gradually adapt the tool to the needs of the SFR imagine program, without complicating its administration.
Support is very important. The Humanperf teams are responsive; they taught us how to use the platform and are also guiding us through the process. I don’t feel alone when using the tool or navigating this new process.
Today, the approach continues to evolve with new use cases. In stores, for example, SFR has incorporated dedicated channels for escalating certain customer cases that require special handling, without creating a tool separate from the SFR Imagine system.
SFR is also preparing for the platform’s first anniversary with a thank-you message and a spotlight on some of its favorite initiatives. The goal is to showcase what has been accomplished, recognize contributions, and reignite and maintain momentum among employees.
With IDhall, SFR now has a centralized system for collecting, tracking, and processing feedback from the field, providing greater visibility into issues related to the customer and employee experience.
