“Sales teams leads our customers relationships and encourages all the Cellnex’s teams to develop our customer centric approach and provide excellent services and solutions to their needs. We follow the evolution the satisfaction and confidence of our customer thanks to the annual Customer Engagement Survey (CES). The results of the annual CES allows us to monitor our relationship with them and to prepare action plans to improve”.
Antoni Liria
Global Sales Excellence director - Cellnex Corporate
Cellnex places significant emphasis on its customers within its value creation model. The company has crafted a relationship model with customers centred around proximity, transparency and a commitment to continual enhancement. To ensure a consistent and meaningful connection with its customers, Cellnex engages in ongoing interactions throughout the entirety of the service delivery process.
This interaction spans from commercial management to addressing incidents, providing reports and handling any inquiries or complaints during the provision, operation, and maintenance phases. Consequently, Cellnex has directed its sales force towards market segments, reinforcing the manager's role. The manager's primary objective involves establishing a specialised, end-to-end relationship with customers. This approach aims to offer comprehensive and personalised value-added solutions and services, assisting customers in addressing their needs and prioritising their overall satisfaction.
In terms of the strategic focus on customer relations, the role of a neutral tower company is pivotal in facilitating fair and equitable access to telecommunication infrastructure across various networks and providers in the industry. In 2023, particular emphasis was placed on Cellnex’s strategic approach to the operators' market through an internal Think Tank report, supporting its Value Proposition to Telecommunication Operators.
Customers are also an essential part of Cellnex's ESG strategy, as they represent a fundamental pillar for the company. In this regard, Cellnex provides customers with communication channels through which they can submit complaints, which are subsequently analysed by Cellnex.
Accordingly, from the Quality Management System, integrated into the Global Management System, the Complaint Management process has been established, which is common to the entire Company. This process aims to handle systematically and homogeneously possible customer complaints, minimising their impact on satisfaction and service quality.
In 2023, there were a total of 48 customer complaints (16 in 2022), of which 83% (99% in 2022) were processed and resolved before the end of the year in accordance with the company’s procedures. The rest are still being processed in 2024. Some complaints relate to service incidents, project delivery service assurance, lease renewal, invoice clarifications, and energy prices.
Likewise, an additional 57 societal complaints were received in Cellnex Netherlands in 2023, primarily related to noise and maintenance issues. The majority of these have been successfully resolved.
The existence of a global customer service model significantly impacts and enhances the quality of customer relations on a global scale by providing an expanded market perspective and a distinct customer orientation. As an element of Cellnex's Industrial Model, the Global Commercial Vision seeks to implement a common business perspective and commercial strategy for customer relations.
The corporate Innovation, Commercial Development and Technology Department, together with the Sales Excellence Department, oversees the identification of international opportunities and drives commercial operations in each country. This involves furnishing support materials, introducing new solutions, services and products, and disseminating best practices to all sales representatives. To facilitate this, Salesforce has been deployed across all countries to streamline and standardise the sales process, thereby enhancing coordination and comprehension of the commercial procedures. After the implementation of Salesforce across all countries, there has been a thorough review of the end-to-end process, from the moment of offering and selling to billing and invoicing. The aim was to align and deploy a more consistent and efficient model across all countries. As a result of this analysis, an additional step for the future unified model has been defined: the Billing Industrial Model. The development and deployment of this new model and the integration of all systems, related with the end-to-end process, will continue throughout 2024.
In order to ensure a personalised and consistent customer relationship, Cellnex has developed a comprehensive global customer service model. This model allows Cellnex to offer its customers three contact points throughout the service:
In 2023, the contents of What We Do have undergone continuous updates and improvements, providing the entire sales team with up-to-date and comprehensive information on the solutions, services, products and references offered by Cellnex to its clients. Additionally, the value propositions tailored for each targeted market segment have been reviewed to ensure a sustained competitive advantage within the company's go-to-market strategies.
Moreover, the commercial repository has been consistently updated with pertinent information and sales materials to bolster the Sales Processes. This encompasses incorporating projects and best practices across all Cellnex territories, facilitating the exchange of expertise and knowledge throughout the entire sales team.
These sales enablement initiatives are managed by Cellnex’s Marketing Taskforce, a cross-functional and cross-country team. This team continuously evaluates methods to enhance customer communication, develop new materials, gain deeper insights into each country's market dynamics and coordinate commercial campaign activities to attract potential new customers.
In 2023, a notable commercial initiative was highlighted by the Marketing and Sales teams and launched into the market to rationalise their infrastructures. This initiative involved a commercial campaign specifically aimed at optimising infrastructure sharing.
Cellnex is consistently looking for ways to improve by placing a strong emphasis on meeting the needs and expectations of stakeholders, offering high-quality services, and ensuring customer satisfaction.
Cellnex Austria is currently following Cellnex’s Industrial Model for maintenance and service, in order to provide availability and reliability for its products and services. In 2023, the average frequency of interruption was 1.84 days (3.5 days in 2022), and the average duration of interruption was 0.002 hours (0.006 hours in 2022).
All structures that 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 correctively maintained by a third party operations and maintenance supplier. Based on the 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.
Cellnex Denmark has developed and implemented a Business Continuity Plan, in addition to performing a risk analysis to ensure the availability and reliability of Cellnex services.
The first step to guarantee the availability and reliability of services, 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 Operation Centre (NOC), open 24/7, which can be used for urgent needs. In France, there is also a issue module in Agora, where stakeholders report anomalies, a supervision centre to alert Cellnex, monthly checks on compliance with contractual deadlines, and maintenance contracts, among others.
In 2023 Cellnex Italy completed the roll-out of the Preventive Maintenance plan and Evolutionary Maintenance plan, aiming to improve the availability and reliability of its infrastructure. Offering an excellent service to customers is a key priority for Cellnex Italy as it strives to improve the reliability of the telecommunication equipment and services offered. The annual maintenance plan is highly efficient with very fast response times in the event of a breakdown. In 2023, the average frequency of interruption was 186 interruptions per month (164 per month in 2022), and the average duration of interruption was 2.4 hours (the same figure as in 2022). For the calculation of the 2023 data, it is worth noting the increase in the Cellnex Italy TIS perimeter of approximately 1000 sites.
At Cellnex Netherlands there is an annual maintenance plan that addresses preventive and corrective maintenance and continuous incident reporting, registration and evaluation, as well as a Service Operating Centre, available 24/7/365, for monitoring and maintenance. In 2023, there was a total of 20 interruptions (5 in 2022).
As a result of performance monitoring, a large set of parameters are monitored and constantly checked to find sources of decreased quality at Cellnex Poland. For example, the cell availability (and unavailability) KPI is monitored, which shows the percentage of base station cell availability time against 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. In addition, call (or data bearer) drop ratios are monitored separately for each technology, showing the percentage of uncompleted calls or data bearer selections against the total number of such attempts. Moreover, a quality assurance measure is deployed, focused on its biggest customer's (Polkomtel) KPI system . This system calculates the percentage of services that comply with agreed KPI target values for all the agreed quality KPIs.
In 2023, the average frequency of interruption was 19.1 days (18.7 days in 2022), and the average duration of interruption was 7.3 hours (8.6 hours in 2022).
Cellnex Portugal only owns and manages passive infrastructure, meaning it doesn’t provide connectivity. However, it conducts preventive maintenance in accordance with a yearly plan and corrective interventions whenever needed and complies with the SLAs defined in contracts with customers. The MNOs manage the factors that ensure quality of service in relation to reliability and interruptions.
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 which 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 and includes Continuity Plans for specific services and infrastructure to ensure the continuity of certain critical services. During 2023, a simulation exercise was carried out which included detection, initial communications, convening of the Crisis Committee and the first steps to be taken in the event of a crisis at Cellnex Spain. The objectives of the drill were:
The drill was carried out on 27 June 2023, simulating a critical incident at the Arganda Teleport.
In 2023, the average frequency of interruption was 1 interruption every 173 days (1 every 128 days in 2022), and the average duration of interruption was 2.7 hours (5.4 hours in 2022). Looking ahead to 2024, there are plans to obtain certification for ISO 22301 (Business Continuity) at global level.
The Cellnex Sweden Network Operation Centre (NOC) monitors the active infrastructure 24/7 and captures alarms and incidents affecting the in-service performance in real time. The NOC dispatches any repair work to the First Line Maintenance organisation which is active 24/7. A Service Level Agreement (SLA) with the MNOs regulates the time to repair. Cellnex Sweden performs preventive maintenance on all its infrastructure regularly to find and repair abnormalities before they turn into incidents.
During 2023, Cellnex Sweden has enhanced and reinforced the IT system portfolio for service management and site information storage.
At Cellnex Switzerland, maintenance, both preventive and corrective, is covered by ad-hoc contracts as the company does not handle active equipment, which falls under the responsibility of the MNOs. The MNOs manage the factors that would ensure quality of service in relation to reliability and interruptions.
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 equivalent 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 that ensure quality of service in relation to reliability and interruptions.
Furthermore, Cellnex engage a continuous programme of planned site inspections. Sites requiring inspection in the upcoming year are scheduled on the Ostara software platform to enable inspection suppliers to conduct the assessments.
Deutsche Telekom certifies the company in Spain for its quality standards for managing the data transmission connectivity service. Cellnex has renewed the certification granted by Deutsche Telekom as a Zero Outage Supplier for the sixth year running. This certification is part of the German company’s worldwide programme for selecting and certifying their key connectivity service providers in each country, to act jointly as partners in improving service to their end customer. This programme sets the German group’s quality standards for their customers based on the operational excellence, security and stability of the systems, monitoring critical components and reducing/resolving incidents with 24/7 availability from their key suppliers.
Cellnex strives to ensure a consistent and intimate rapport with its customers. A method to achieve this goal involves conducting periodic Customer Engagement Surveys (CES). These surveys enable Cellnex to gauge its customers' perceptions regarding the company and evaluate the quality and suitability of the service. Action plans are devised on the basis of the findings.
Cellnex has a unified and global customer engagement survey for all Business Units, which makes it possible to standardise customer engagement and identify and develop specific global and local action plans. The main objectives of the survey are:
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. Specific questions are defined within these five categories. Business Units can choose to include more targeted questions, subject to prior validation at corporate level.
Furthermore, to ensure objectivity and independence, the fieldwork and analysis of both global and local results are centrally overseen by an external provider appointed by 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).
Based on an analysis of the results, the results are positive - with significant satisfaction (7.6) and a significant NPS (25%), similar to the results obtained in the 2022 CES.
Response rate was high, reaching 49%, considering that similar surveys (B2B) experience a maximum participation of less than 20%. Moreover, in comparison with CES 2022 participation has increased in 9 points.
It has been observed that, in general, Cellnex customers rate their main needs positively, which are focused on attributes related to the quality of the service and commercial management, which have a direct impact on overall satisfaction.
Before starting...
We use our own and third-party cookies for analytical purposes and to show you personalized advertising based on a profile prepared from your browsing habits (for example, pages visited). Click HERE for more information. You can accept all cookies by pressing the "Accept" button or configure or reject their use by pressing the "Configure" button.
ACCEPT AND CONTINUE Configure cookies