SK Telecom reclaims No. 1 ranking; CEO says 'the answer was the customer'

CEO shares reflections in newsroom post

Telecom reclaims top spot in all three major customer satisfaction surveys after a year; CEO introduces trust-recovery efforts, including direct meetings with more than 35,000 customers

SK Telecom CEO Jeong Jae-heon visits Gwanin Senior University in Pocheon during the company's founding anniversary in March. [SK Telecom]

SK Telecom has reclaimed the top spot in customer satisfaction rankings a year after losing it in the wake of a cyberattack, with CEO Jeong Jae-heon saying the company found its way back by putting customers first.

In a post published Thursday on the company's newsroom, Jeong said SK Telecom had "restored in one year the trust that had crumbled after causing worry to the public and our customers," adding that the result carried special weight because it came from customer evaluations conducted in the very year following the breach of their trust.

This year, SK Telecom ranked first in all three of South Korea's major customer satisfaction surveys — the Korean Customer Satisfaction Index, the National Customer Satisfaction Index and the Korean Standard-Service Quality Index.

Jeong cited statistics from Australian market research firm Roy Morgan showing that 92 percent of major brands that suffer serious damage to their trust fail to fully recover it even a year later. "In that sense, this year's customer satisfaction results mean more than a simple recovery in rankings," he said.

"This is a meaningful recognition that our efforts are translating into changes customers can feel in their daily lives," Jeong said. "The answer was found in the customers who believed in SK Telecom and waited for us, even in our moment of crisis." He added that SK Telecom employees had taken the initiative to go directly to customers rather than waiting for customers to speak up first.

SK Telecom CEO Jeong Jae-heon [SK Telecom]

Jeong also outlined the company's year-long efforts to rebuild customer trust. He said employees traveled to 87 cities and counties across the country and met directly with more than 35,000 customers, who shared in detail the inconveniences they experienced and the changes they wanted to see — spanning network quality, roaming, membership services and rate plans.

"We did not stop at listening to customers — we changed things one by one so that customers could feel the difference in their daily lives," Jeong said, noting that the company had worked to block spam and voice phishing, improve roaming data services and consolidate rate plans.

He said the standard for every change was the customer. "We focused on making it easier for customers to choose the services they need and more convenient to enjoy them in everyday life," he said.

Jeong also pledged to turn those changes into deeper, more lasting trust. Citing South Korea's fencing team, which won gold at the Asian Games, he said SK Telecom's trust recovery followed the same principle as the Korean proverb about grinding an axe into a needle — that steady, quiet effort shines brightest at the decisive moment.

"A result may show up as a single ranking, but behind it must be the daily effort of meeting customers, identifying their inconveniences and changing things one by one," he said. "We will take this result as a request from our customers to hold ourselves to a higher standard and repay them with better service."

sjpark@heraldcorp.com