Universal customer service app

• In addition to the existing web application (desktop version), customers will also be able to use the customer center on the move. 

• The solution offers sustainable investment protection for the existing infrastructure and back-end connections.

• Backwards compatibility enables Swisscom to meet customer requirements on existing systems as well as on new terminals. 

• Time frame: 2013

Swisscom’s customer selfcare centre is among the most heavily used web apps in Switzerland. The mobile revolution has, however, changed the way customers are using it.

Task

Swisscom‘s online customer selfcare centre has been helping private and business customers manage their accounts for more than a decade. In addition to the existing desktop version, the company wanted to update the web app to provide an improved user experience on mobile devices. The challenge was to ensure the user interface was optimised for all of the many different mobile devices on which it would be used. 

Solution

An interdisciplinary development team consisting of front end developers, user experience designers and a project manager team prioritised more than 400 use cases on 800 web pages provisioned for the mobile web. Thanks to responsive design a single application serves the same content for all devices, with the difference in display characteristics across the various devices being dealt with using CSS – a much more cost effective approach than setting up a new infrastructure for mobile devices. The solution offers investment protection in existing infrastructure and backend integration for the foreseeable future. By successfully upgrading the app whilst maintaining backward compatibility, Swisscom was able to meet the requirements of customers using both existing systems and new end devices.