How Swisscom lost its “head” to create a unified commerce experience

As Switzerland’s largest telecommunications agency in business since 1851, Swisscom had been running operations on a monolithic commerce platform for some time. By the mid-2010s the outdated system had run its course and the lack of flexibility were negatively impacting customer experiences and expectations. 

Swisscom started out in the telegraph line business in the 19^thcentury before making the move to telephones – it now serves over 1.5 million TV customers, 2 million broadband customers and 6.6 million mobile communications customers. So as an evolving, transforming company these customer experience and commerce platform challenges needed to be resolved quickly. 

Swisscom was struggling to get new offerings to market fast and the overall customer experience was becoming fragmented. Since they had used a full stack commerce platform, their heavy back-end systems were slowing down customer-facing front-end innovation. With new channels and touchpoints coming into play, the company needed a flexible commerce architecture that would allow for decoupling of the front-end from the back-end. A decoupled commerce platform would allow Swisscom marketers and experience managers to modernize the customer journey while keeping systems of record stable and reliable. 

So, in 2018 the company took the “headless” approach and selected an API-first commerce platform that works equally well with any front-end system. Their API-first commerce platform intermediates between the customer experience layer and systems of record like ERP, CRM, inventory or supply chain systems. Swisscom marketers and merchandisers can now use their CMS to create new digital experiences for customers at a pace that meets market needs. 

Since going headless, Swisscom has been able to roll out new digital experiences at record pace starting with inOne, a mobile, TV, and land-line bundle.

inOne customers now have unified shopping and support experiences whether they’re calling a sales rep on the phone, shopping online, or walking into a physical store. 

Another customer benefit by going headless is My Swisscom, a mobile app that provides an overview of costs, subscriptions and products in real-time that allows for easy management and purchase. 

Since going headless Swisscom now delivers a consistent omnichannel experience for their customers and employees.