VSP
VSP is revamping its customer experience with a modern customer portal
VSP, or Vakka-Suomen Puhelin Oy, helps businesses succeed by providing high-quality customer service, IT and telecommunications solutions. The group employs 550 skilled staff across several locations in Finland.
A wholly Finnish, ISO 9001- and ISO 27001-certified service provider is proud of its roots as a long-established telephone company that has been building reliable connections for almost 140 years.
In the regions of Southwest Finland and Satakunta, VSP’s services also include those offered to consumers, such as high-speed fibre-optic connections, IT security services and a comprehensive range of TV and entertainment services. The company wanted to develop a modern customer portal for its thousands of consumer customers, enabling smooth and easily accessible service around the clock.
The challenge lies in a fragmented customer experience and the growing need for self-service
VSP’s customers previously had to use several different systems and channels to manage their affairs. Matters relating to billing, changes to services and other enquiries often required assistance from customer service. This placed a strain on staff and limited the availability of the service, particularly outside customer service opening hours.
The driving force behind this was a clear strategic objective: VSP wanted to modernise its customer experience, strengthen its brand as a digitally-oriented service provider, and create a new sales channel that would serve customers around the clock. Building on these principles, a joint planning process was launched to create an online service channel for VSP’s retail customers.
The collaboration progressed step by step from the conceptualisation phase to implementationn
Service design and technical specification
The collaboration began with careful groundwork. Together with VSP’s experts, Sofokus developed a user-centred concept for the new service portal, taking into account both customers’ needs and the company’s internal users.
During the work:
- the service’s use cases and business logic were defined
- the technical architecture was designed
- the service’s architecture and user journeys were visualised using wireframe models
The aim was to create a portal that brings together a fragmented range of services into a single, clear interface, whilst at the same time opening up a new channel for VSP to sell and market its services.
UX/UI design and a clickable prototype
Based on the specifications, Sofokus produced a user interface design and a clickable Figma prototype for the portal. The prototype enabled the user experience to be tested and refined before the actual development work began. This reduced the risk of costly changes in direction during the implementation phase and helped to establish a shared understanding of the solution’s functionalities.
Technical implementation
The phased technical implementation is currently underway, and part of the portal has already been made available to VSP’s customers.
What makes this project particularly challenging is the integration of several critical back-end systems into the customer portal:
- Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system – management of customer and product data, and invoicing
- Network Information System – management of network planning and availability data, including subscriber and customer identifiers as well as equipment location data
- Radius – network access management and speed profile configuration
- Telia – strong authentication
The development of the MinunVSP service portal has been a considerably more extensive undertaking than simply launching a new online service. To customers, the portal appears as a modern and user-friendly service channel, but its implementation has required significant behind-the-scenes work in carrying out IT system integrations and in developing data quality and information management. The project has strengthened our entire organisation's ability to utilise high-quality data and automation in service delivery. As a result of the project, we have built an end-to-end automation system which we will utilise in the further development of our online services.
The result is a better customer experience and more efficient operations
The new online service portal brings tangible benefits both to VSP’s customers and to the company’s own operations.
To VSP’s customers:
- You can carry out your business at any time and from any location via the 24/7 self-service channel
- Customers get a real-time overview of their own services, invoices and orders
- The customer experience is now smoother, clearer and more modern
To VSP:
- Manual work is reduced, freeing up resources for more demanding customer service tasks
- The portal serves as a new sales channel for upselling and new sales
- Customer insight is enhanced through data and analytics
- VSP is strengthening its brand as a service provider offering modern digital services
