6.1 Customers

Our customer-centric approach

Customers are the core of Cellnex's value creation model, which is why Cellnex has defined a relationship model with its customers based on proximity, transparency and the search for constant improvement.

Cellnex aims to guarantee a personal and stable relationship with its customers and does so with a continuous interaction with them throughout the entire service provision process, from commercial management to response to incidents, reporting and possible queries and complaints during provision, operation and maintenance. These are the reasons why Cellnex is orienting its sales force by market segment, strengthening the role of the manager, whose mission is a specialised end-to-end relationship with customers, offering then a comprehensive and personalised value-added solutions and services, helping them to solve their needs and focusing on  their overall satisfaction.

Moreover, customers are part of Cellnex's ESG strategy, as they are a fundamental pillar for the Company. In this regard, Cellnex also offers customers a wide range of communication channels over which Cellnex receives complaints by its customers and analyses them. In this regard, the Quality Master Plan defines the establishment of a common Complaints Management process for the entire Company, to be implemented in 2023. This process aims to define the methodology for managing customer complaints in order to minimise impact and ensure customer engagement.

In 2022, there were 16 complaints (124 in 2021), of which 99% (98% in 2021) were processed and resolved in accordance with the company's procedures before the end of the year, the rest are still being processed in 2023. Most complaints relate to a specific decline in service.

Cellnex Connectivity Days

Global customer service model

A part of Cellnex's Industrial Model, the Global Commercial Vision, aims to implement a common business perspective and commercial strategy, offering a broader vision of the market and a clear customer focus.

The corporate Global Marketing and Sales department is responsible for identifying international opportunities, developing commercial activity in each country by providing support materials, introducing new solutions, services and products, and extending good practice to all sales representatives. To this end, the Salesforce tool has been implemented in all countries to homogenise and standardise the sales process and to better coordinate and understand the commercial process.

Moreover, to guarantee a personal and stable relationship with customers, Cellnex has designed a global customer service model.

This model enables Cellnex to provide its customers with three contact points throughout the service:

• Commercial/Account Manager: Each customer is assigned an account manager/commercial sales representative, whose responsibility is to keep abreast of all the relationships that Cellnex maintains with its customers to meet their needs and concerns from a global perspective.
• Project Manager: Together with Account Managers, they play an important role in customer satisfaction, as they are the ones who can influence customer satisfaction through optimal performance in designing the service to be provided.
• Supervisor: These are the main contact with the customer, together with the account manager, in the service delivery stage. They are responsible for ensuring the availability of service levels, and monitoring and optimising the service provided.

In 2022, the contents of What We Do have continued to be updated and improved, so that the entire sales team has up-to-date and more complete information on the solutions, services and products  that Cellnex can offer customers, as well as references and new projects in other territories, allowing the transfer of skills and knowledge between the entire sales team. In addition, the commercial repository was reorganised and redefined to facilitate access to information and offer a more agile presentation for the entire sales team.

Furthermore, the Marketing Team Coordination Taskforce helps improve communication with customers, generate new materials, better understand the reality of the market in each country, and coordinate brand awareness activities to generate new potential Cellnex customers.

Ensuring the availability and reliability of Cellnex services

Cellnex focuses on stakeholder needs and expectations, offers high quality services, satisfies customers and is continuously improving.

Cellnex Austria

Cellnex Austria is currently following the Cellnex’s Industrial Model for maintenance and service, in order to provide availability and reliability of its products and services. In 2022 the average frequency of interruption was 3.5 days (no data in 2021), and the average duration of interruption was 0.006 hours (no data in 2021).

Cellnex Denmark

All structures which Cellnex Denmark delivers as a service to its customers are managed though preventive and corrective maintenance plans to ensure continuous operation for its customers. In addition, all sites are monitored and corrective maintained by a third party operations and maintenance supplier. Based on severity or potential impact to telecommunications services, tickets are divided into different categories, giving operations and maintenance suppliers the ability to react to cases before the network goes down. There is no data available of the average frequency of interruption, and the average duration of interruption.

Cellnex Spain

Cellnex Spain has a Business Continuity Plan, the objective of which is to establish the technical and logistical processes necessary to guarantee the continuity of the Company's critical activities that may be affected by any type of alteration that puts their continuity at risk. The Business Continuity Plan responds to incidents that may affect the main components of the Service; includes Continuity Plans for specific services and infrastructures that guarantee the continuity of certain critical services. At Cellnex Spain in 2022 the average frequency of interruption was 128 days (119 days in 2021), and the average duration of interruption was 5.4 hours (2.2 hours in 2021).

Cellnex France

To guaranty the availability and reliability of the services, the fist step is the preventive maintenance, as it allows Cellnex France to ensure quality equipment. Then, Cellnex France uses a ticketing tool to have all the issues detected on site. The final level is the Network Operating Center (NOC), open 24/7, that can be used for urgent needs.  In 2022 There is no data available of the average frequency of interruption, and the average duration of interruption.

Cellnex Ireland

Cellnex Ireland is not involved in management of networks. The MNOs manage the factors which would ensure quality of service in relation to reliability and interruptions.

Cellnex Italy

In 2022 Cellnex Italy completed the rollout for Preventive Maintenance plan and Evolutive Maintenance plan. Their goal is to improve the availability and reliability of its infrastructure. It is very important to Cellnex Italy to offer a very good service to its customers, and they try to improve the reliability of the telecommunication equipment and services offered. The annual maintenance plan is very efficient, and interventions are very fast in case of breakdown. In 2022 the average frequency of interruption was 164 interruptions per month (90 interruptions per month in 2021), and the average duration of interruption was 2 hours (3-4 hours in 2021). It should be noted hath in for the calculation of the 2022 data, the perimeter of Cellnex Italy doubled.

Cellnex Netherlands

At Cellnex Netherlands there is an annual maintenance plan that addresses preventive and corrective maintenance, and a continuous incident reporting, registration and evaluation, as well as a Service Operating Centre available 24/7/365, for monitoring and maintenance.  In 2022 there were 5 interruptions.

Cellnex United Kingdom

Cellnex UK town planning and community relations processes are aligned to the industry Code of Practice for Wireless Network Development in England, with a similar Code in Wales and similar practice in Scotland and Northern Ireland. The Code of Practice sets out guidance and principles in deploying mobile communication infrastructure, largely based around minimising environmental impact, through sharing where possible, good design, respecting site context and sensitivity. The MNOs manage the factors which would ensure quality of service in relation to reliability and interruptions.

Cellnex Poland

As a result of performance monitoring, a large set of parameters is monitored and constantly checked to find sources of decreased quality at Cellnex Poland. For example, cell availability (and unavailability) KPI is monitored, which shows the percentage of base station cell availability time to total time. Cell availability of 99,7% or better is usually achieved for mature technologies and around 98% for 5G which is under heavy development. Also, call (or data bearer) drop ratios are monitored separately for each technology, which shows the percentage of un completed calls or data bearer selections to a total number of such attempts. Moreover, a quality assurance measure towards its biggest customer (Polkomtel) KPI system is deployed. This system counts, for all agreed quality KPIs, what percentage of services comply with agreed KPI target values. In 2022 the average frequency of interruption was 18,7 days (no data in 2021), and the average duration of interruption was 8,6 hours (no data in 2021).

Cellnex Switzerland

At Cellnex Switzerland maintenance, both preventive and corrective, is covered by ad-hoc contracts, as they don’t handle active equipment which is under the MNO’s responsibility. The MNOs manage the factors which would ensure quality of service in relation to reliability and interruptions.

Cellnex Sweden

At Cellnex Sweden all sites are monitored by a Network Operating Center (NOC) 24/7 for alarms related to its infrastructure (i.e. fire, aviation lights, power interruption alarms etc). Cellnex Sweden has a 24/7 national field service organization that reacts upon those alarms when triggered by the NOC. The MNOs manage the factors which would ensure quality of service in relation to reliability and interruptions.

Cellnex Portugal

Cellnex Portugal only own and manage passive infrastructure, as such they don’t provide connectivity. However, they conduct preventive maintenances according to a yearly plan and corrective interventions whenever needed and comply with the SLA’s defined in contracts with the clients. The MNOs manage the factors which would ensure quality of service in relation to reliability and interruptions.

Customer Engagement

Cellnex wants to guarantee a personal and stable relationship with its customers, and one way of doing this is by regularly carrying out customer engagement surveys. This way, Cellnex can find out the perception of its customers about the company and assess the quality and suitability of the service provided. With the results, action plans are drawn up.

Cellnex has a unified and global customer engagement survey for all Business Units, which makes it possible to standardize customer engagement and identify the specific global and local  action plans. The main objectives of the survey are:

• To obtain a global and easy framework, deployable across Cellnex, to compare customer engagement in all Business Units with common KPIs.
• To analyse the customer engagement both overall and country-specific by launching a common customer survey in Cellnex countries

The survey is linked to the Cellnex Process Map and is broken down into five categories: General, Offer and Sell, Deliver Services, Assurance and Customer Care, in which specific questions related to these topics are defined. In addition, the Business Units can add specific questions, with prior validation at corporate level.

Moreover, to guarantee objectivity and independence, fieldwork and analysis of global and local results is managed
centrally by an external provider from Corporate. The results of the main key indicators (Customer satisfaction-CSAT, Net promoter score-NPS, Customer effort score-CES, Response rate-RR) were segmented by customer ABC category (A: MNO and other  critical customers, B: important customers, C:Long Tail customers) and by customer segment (Broadcast, Operators, Public Administrations and Enterprises).

From the analysis of the results obtained, great overall scores are achieved, with high satisfaction (7.6) and a significative NPS: 25%,  that are similar to the obtained in CES 2021 (Customer Engagement Survey).

Response Rate is 40%, so the high participation is remarkable, as in similar surveys (B2B) the maximum participation is less than 20%. Although in comparison with CES 2021 participation has decreased, this is due to the significant increase in the universe (+97% from 453 contacts to 892 contacts).

Additionally, it has been observed that, in general, Cellnex customers rate positively their main needs, which are focused on attributes related to the quality of the service offered and personal treatment, which have a direct impact on overall satisfaction

Security of the information

In 2019 Cellnex reviewed and approved a new global Information Security Policy, which aims to establish the guidelines and lines of action in Information Security that govern the way in which Cellnex Group manages and protects its information and services, as well as its communication to stakeholders and implementation in all companies and functional areas of the Group.

The basic principle of the policy is that information is a very important asset for Cellnex, and it is necessary to guarantee the confidentiality, integrity and availability of information in accordance with recognised standards of Information Security management in the provision of services as a Telecommunications infrastructure operator to Operators, Broadcasters, Public Administrations and Corporations. Therefore, steps are taken to identify and protect Information assets from unauthorised access, modification, communication or destruction, whether intentional or incidental, ensuring that they are used only for purposes approved by Management.

Moreover, continuous improvement is developed within the framework of a Management System, which Management undertakes to lead in accordance with the ISO 27001 standard, and which applies to all the Group’s Business Units. All of this is based on people management, process management and continuous improvement; guaranteeing its effectiveness and efficiency. In 2022, the global ISO 27001 certification has been maintained in Corporation, Spain, Italy, Portugal, France, Switzerland, Netherlands, Ireland, UK and by 2022 all the companies in Austria, Denmark and Sweden have been included into the scope of the certification.

In addition, in 2022 Cellnex has developed a new Global Security Master Plan for Cybersecurity and Physical Security which has identified the main security risks in Cellnex and defines the actions to be developed between 2022 and 2025 to manage these risks.  This new 2022-2025 Global Security Master Plan takes into account the complex context in which we find ourselves:

• With a very advanced level of digital transformation within Cellnex, which means that the level of digital exposure is high and therefore so are the cybersecurity risks,
• With a great growth both in the types of services and in the number of countries where we offer services.
• With heterogeneous security regulations in different countries aiming to curb cybercrime and regulate digital sovereignty, which in practice puts pressure on cybersecurity.

The main initiatives developed during 2022 within the framework of the Global Security Master Plan:

• Implementation of two-factor authentication for access by all users (internal and external) to core applications that manage the operation and maintenance of Cellnex assets.
• Deployment of a real-time vulnerability monitoring solution to proactively detect security risks.
• Automation of incident response processes in case of detection of security incidents.

In addition, because of the new security threats caused by the conflict in Ukraine, cybersecurity risks have been reviewed and the monitoring of events arising from the conflict has been reinforced, and specific audits and drills have been carried out to check the level of protection and response to the materialization of these new threats.

Moreover, during 2022 the Security Office has been expanded with new functions to strengthen its functional and geographical scope, incorporating all new business units (Sweden, Denmark, Austria, and Poland ).  The new services offered by the Security Office in 2022 include:

• Development and maintenance of the security risk management model.
• Carrying out continuous attack tests to prove the effectiveness of security measures and processes implemented at Cellnex.
• Support for the monitoring of new regulations with an impact on security for each Business Unit.

During 2022, no data breaches or incident involving theft or loss of information or affecting the business has been detected in any of Cellnex's business units

Automation of security processes

Cellnex is committed to the automation of security processes, for example through the development of tools that allow the automatic execution of actions when certain events are detected to block sophisticated attacks received. This has made it possible to gain detection, prevention, and protection capacity, thereby increasing response capacity and therefore the level of security and mitigating the associated risks.  The security incidents detected and blocked have increased in complexity due to the evolution of increasingly targeted attacks.

Awareness

During 2022, several awareness-raising and training campaigns were carried out for employees in relation to information security. In this regard, for example, the following have been carried out:

• 14 awareness campaigns using "Phishing" simulations (where an attacker sends a fraudulent message designed to trick an employee into revealing confidential information or to implement malicious software in the victim's infrastructure).
• Campaigns where all Cellnex users must explicitly agree to the security policies.
• One cybersecurity training session for members of the Board of Directors and Senior Management on cybersecurity best-practice and how they are implemented at Cellnex.

In addition, information security advice has been provided and alerts have been given on virus and phishing campaigns aimed at Cellnex staff.

All this has contributed to the fact that the rate of fall in phishing campaigns has dropped by 6% from 2021 to 2022, despite the increase in the sophistication of the attacks.