After Jung Jai-hun of SK Telecom declared at his first media roundtable since taking office on the 1st of this month in Barcelona, Spain, where the world's largest mobile trade show MWC took place, that the company would "return to being a customer-centered company with the original mindset we lost," the company has been accelerating efforts to strengthen trust. SK Telecom launched a 100-member customer advisory group on the 16th and held a briefing on plans for customer value innovation activities on the 18th.
At a briefing on plans for customer value innovation activities held that day at Ferrum Tower in Euljiro, Seoul, Lee Hye-yeon, head of SKT's Customer Value Innovation Office, said, "Customer trust is the reason SK Telecom exists," and noted, "What the Customer Trust Committee keeps stressing is that, rather than focusing on recovery, we need a change in mindset to redesign the company." Lee added, "This year, we will significantly expand on-site communication with customers to properly understand them and reflect the answers in every touchpoint channel and in products and services." The message is that the company will both faithfully reflect the customer's voice across management and services to raise customer experience value, and move to strengthen trust.
These moves are the execution of what Jung previewed at MWC—"As the No. 1 operator, we are faltering, and there is a sense of crisis unless we fundamentally change,"—announcing "customer value innovation" and an "AI great transformation" to achieve it. At the time, Jung said, "Through last year's hacking incident, we kept proclaiming we were customer-centered, but in hindsight there was no answer to 'what the company actually did that was customer-centered,'" and added, "We will return to the essence of our business." After returning to Korea, on the 16th of this month Jung set a goal of "one person, one AI agent," under which every employee, including non-developers, creates AI tailored to their own work. On the same day, the company also launched a customer advisory group made up of 100 customers.
That day, SK Telecom presented three directions to get closer to customers: ▲ strengthening trust through actions in the field where customers are ▲ continuously hearing diverse voices of customers ▲ participation in customer value–centered change by all organizations and employees. The company said it plans to carry out year-round activities such as counseling, education, and phone care services by visiting customer touchpoints nationwide and digitally vulnerable groups, and to continue providing differentiated customer experiences.
To that end, SK Telecom late last year established a CX (Customer Experience) organization under the Customer Value Innovation Office. This organization listens to and concretizes customer requirements and specifically reflects them in products or services, supporting the execution of "customer-centered" change. In detail, the CX organization is responsible for: ▲ collecting and analyzing needs through direct customer contact across various channels ▲ proposing improvements to services and more ▲ mid- to long-term plans to enhance customer value.
SK Telecom also plans to expand its "visiting service," which it has pursued since last year. Since Feb., the company has visited six locations, starting with Jinan County, North Jeolla Province, followed by Gapyeong County, Gyeonggi Province, and Hwacheon County, Gangwon Province, to provide guidance and counseling on how to use mobile phones. The "visiting service" is part of customer protection measures implemented after last year's cyber intrusion incident, carried out to ease the inconvenience and anxiety of customers with low online and offline accessibility.
SK Telecom plans to visit 71 counties nationwide to meet customers it has not usually encountered in person. It will prioritize regions where the elderly population is 30% or more and provide not only security education but also telecommunications and AI consultations and even mobile phone after-sales service consultations to help ensure a safe and convenient communications life.
SK Telecom will also push customized trust-building activities that reflect the characteristics of various customer groups, including ultra-long-term customers of more than 40 years, customers in the 20s–40s age group, and youth customers. The company plans to meet ultra-long-term customers of more than 40 years in person to convey its gratitude and hear their opinions, while preparing improvement measures such as shortening counseling processes and assigning dedicated counselors so long-term customers can use the customer center more conveniently.
SK Telecom will also arrange events to hear university students' opinions through collaboration with business clubs at each university and link them with the "youth work experience support program." In the second half of this year, the company also plans to hold AI utilization and security workshops for elementary and middle schools.
In addition, SK Telecom will work to build an "AI data curating" system that refines, classifies, and processes customers' diverse needs and signals scattered across channels to provide data-based personalized services optimized for AI learning. Through this, the company expects to both safely protect customers' personal information and explore directions for improving products and services.
The company also decided that data labeling work necessary for improving AI services will be handled directly by specialized employees without external outsourcing. Lee emphasized, "Because a group of experts will process it, we can build an AI golden dataset."
In addition, SK Telecom CEO Jung Jai-hun and employees plan to further increase field visits focused on customer touchpoints. Starting this year, the company will broaden hands-on field experiences by SK Telecom employees to major customer touchpoints overall, including regions visited by the "visiting service."
The company also plans to build a corporate culture that puts "customers" at the center of all activities enterprise-wide, such as by having new hires carry out projects during training to consider and solve problems customers face on-site.
Lee Hye-yeon, head of SK Telecom's Customer Value Innovation Office, said, "Our goal this year at SK Telecom is to go directly to the field to listen to customers' voices and link them to company changes, while making those changes a sustainable structure," and added, "We will focus all our capabilities on improvements that do not miss even the smallest customer voices so customers can feel our efforts to change."