EECC-Compliant Contract Management for Telco Customers

As of December 1, 2021, a large telecommunications company was required to implement new rules and processes to ensure clear transparency for both prospective customers during contract conclusion and existing customers throughout the contract term.

This included, among other measures, adjusting the notice period for termination from three months to one month. In addition, a clear, easy-to-understand, and standardized contract summary had to be provided at the time of contract conclusion. Furthermore, existing customers were to receive annual information on the optimal tariff based on their current plan in the form of a “Best Tariff Advice.”

The specific requirements derived from the European Code were continuously refined over an extended period, initially without clear implementation guidelines. Once the final requirements were defined, only a very short timeframe remained before the go-live date of December 1, 2021.

The existing, established processes were not designed to meet the new requirements. In particular, processes that had previously been executed synchronously had to be extensively adapted to enable asynchronous customer consent going forward.

A consistent multi-channel approach was implemented, enabling customers to provide their consent to the contract summary with maximum flexibility. This can be done online at the time of contract conclusion, subsequently via web or app, offline by phone during the call, as well as through automated follow-up actions across all sales channels. What began as a regulatory requirement evolved into a fully synchronized, real-time, cross-channel solution.

Thanks to the newly created freedom of choice, customers can decide immediately or at a later point in time depending on their individual preferences. This flexibility is perceived by many customers as particularly customer-friendly.

To meet the new EECC requirements, targeted real-time processes were designed and integrated into the existing system landscape.

The existing backend systems were adapted accordingly to fully map and reliably support the new real-time processes.

The go-live was completed on schedule and accompanied by an intensive hyper-care phase, during which fine-tuning was carried out and stable operations were ensured.

All EECC requirements were implemented in full compliance and on schedule by December 1, 2021. This ensured regulatory certainty and created a stable foundation for ongoing operations.

The launch of the new processes was completed without errors. There were no outages, complaints, or objections, ensuring a smooth transition into day-to-day operations.

Contrary to initial concerns about potential losses, significantly increased conversion rates were achieved. The high level of flexibility and maximum transparency in the decision-making process proved to be a clear advantage and sustainably strengthened sales performance.