XPLERE CASE STUDY ANALYSIS Fixing the Digital End of the Customer Journey: The KPN Story How a leading Dutch telecom benchmarked its digital customer experience with real-world testing, found that reliability and retention were its biggest opportunities, and reported a Net Promoter Score swing from −4 to +9 in support. |
70% Digital adoption, “Change” journey | 58% Digital uptake, “Get Support” (disruptions) | +13 pts NPS movement, −4 to +9 (our calculation) | Top quartile DCX benchmark ranking reported |
AT A GLANCE
| Organisation | KPN |
| Industry | Telecommunications |
| Revenue | €5.78 billion |
| Employees | 9,500 |
| Advisor | Gartner Consulting |
THE CHALLENGE
Keep customers, grow revenue per user, and do it digitally
KPN is the incumbent telecom provider in a highly competitive Dutch market, offering fixed-line, mobile, internet and TV services. Its priority was to improve the digital experience across the entire customer life cycle, not just at the point of sale.
Two business goals sat behind that priority: retain the existing customer base and increase average revenue per user (ARPU). The ambition was to become a market leader in digital customer experience (DCX).
WHY IT MATTERS Many operators invest heavily in acquisition journeys. KPN’s case is a reminder that support, change and retention journeys are where digital experience quietly decides loyalty.
THE APPROACH
From opinions to tested journeys
Instead of relying on subjective analysis and theoretical models, KPN benchmarked what customers could actually do.
1. Set a clear ambition
Become a market leader in digital customer experience across the full life cycle, with retention and ARPU as the commercial targets.
2. Benchmark with real tests
Working with Gartner Consulting, KPN tested actual digital features and journeys using mystery shoppers. One example: whether a shopping cart persisted so a customer could start, continue and complete a purchase across multiple devices.
3. Read the signal
The benchmark pointed to two opportunities: a reliable web experience, and the often-neglected “end” of the customer journey, which is retention.
4. Improve through engineering
KPN made engineering-led enhancements guided by the benchmark insights, aiming for predictable, frictionless and satisfying digital experiences.
THE RESULTS
What KPN reported
Figures below are as published in the client story.
| Metric | Reported | Note |
| Digital adoption, “Change” journey | 70% | Share of customers using digital channels |
| Digital uptake, “Get Support” (disruptions) | 58% | Share of customers using digital channels |
| Net Promoter Score, “Get Support” | −4 → +9 | A swing of 13 points (our arithmetic) |
| NPS increase across key journeys | >20% | Not defined (relative change or points) |
| Digital customer experience (DCX) benchmark | Top quartile | Ranking as reported by KPN |
| Digital anxiety in telco interactions | Eliminated | Stated by KPN; method not disclosed |
Source figures belong to KPN and Gartner; the +13 point NPS swing is our own calculation.
XPLERE ANALYSIS
What other brands can take from it
The following points are our interpretation of the published story, not claims made by KPN or Gartner.
- Test the experience, don’t debate it. Mystery-shopper testing of real features, such as cross-device cart persistence, exposes failures that internal opinion misses.
- Fix the neglected end. Retention and support journeys often get less design attention than acquisition, yet they drive loyalty and lifetime value.
- Reliability before novelty. The benchmark highlighted a dependable web experience as a core opportunity, ahead of new features.
- Measure per journey. Reporting adoption and NPS by journey shows where digital works and where customers still fall back to other channels.
- Pair adoption with sentiment. Digital uptake and NPS moved together in the support journey. Tracking both guards against pushing customers online without improving how they feel.
- Treat CX as engineering work. The improvements were described as engineering-led, which suggests CX gains need delivery capacity, not only strategy.
Read with care • This is a consultancy-published client story, so the results are self-reported and have no independent verification or control group. • No timeframe is given for the improvements. • The phrase “over 20% NPS increases” is not defined (relative change or points), and the +13 point figure above is our own arithmetic from −4 to +9. • No churn, retention or ARPU figures are disclosed, so the link from digital CX to those business goals is stated but not quantified. |
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Source: KPN client story published by Gartner, All figures belong to the original source. This article is an independent analysis by Xplere and does not describe work performed by Xplere.
