IE Domain Registry Annual Report 2019

IE Domain Registry  Annual Report & Review  2019 22 Business and Market Review Customer Experience Customer Experience (CX) continues to play an important role in all customer interactions across all channels and touchpoints building loyalty and support for .ie domains. Delivering excellent customer experience is essential to drive business performance and will help ensure that .ie remains a trusted and valued domain for our customers. According to Accenture Strategy (2017) 1 , business leaders that invest strategically in CX and focus on building experiences that are highly relevant to their customers will see twice the returns on their CX investments than their peers. They do so by building a keen understanding of their customers’ fast-changing needs and preferences so that they are able to continually and proactively deliver services and experiences that business customers value. We have focused our efforts across a number of areas, combining digital and human interaction. Easier and faster registration Following the liberalisation policy change in 2018, which made it easier and faster for individuals and organisations to register a .ie domain, we continue to experience sustained growth. Liberalisation completely transformed the customer’s .ie domain registration experience, creating an easier and faster process to get online with an identifiably Irish website and email address. In 2017, before liberalisation was implemented, new .ie registrations totalled 39,523. In 2019, post liberalisation, that figure was 50,167, a 27% increase. Employee training All staff undertook customer experience training in 2019. The purpose of the training was for all staff in the company to take a similar, standardised, consistent approach to how we interact with our customers. CX is front and centre of all our activities and a customer-centric mind-set has been embedded among staff. 1 www.accenture.com/ie-en/insight-b2b-cx-anthem Technology advancements Planning commenced in 2019 for a new domain registry management platform which aims to provide our Registrars with more powerful and flexible domain management tools, as well as a modern, user-friendly interface. The new system will have greater functionality and flexibility and will ensure that our technical systems can support long-term growth in .ie domains. The new registry platform is an investment for the next decade and is expected to be implemented by the end of 2020. Registrars will experience continued benefits from this system well into the future. The new platform’s standardised design aligns with the EPP technical interfaces used in other internet namespaces with which they are already familiar. Data analytics We have been proactive in using our research, data analytics and data visualisation tools to provide customers with insights and performance metrics. This provides high quality, actionable data to help them enhance efficiency and streamline domain registrations.