Deutsche Telekom Digital Labs: Building a Customer Obsessed Developer Cult
What makes DTDL a favorite place for developers, the advantages of working with bright minds, and how the little things add up for developers
When we ask our developers “why DTDL is a favorite place for you?”,
we usually get the following response:
“New problems to solve every day with a focus on technology-oriented solutions to better the lives of customers. There is never a dull moment at work!”
“Opportunities to try out new roles, work in a global environment, and the best part is that the learning never stops here”
“ The chance to watch a Champions League match live in Munich as a reward for my first ever delivery was the most amazing experience ever”
“Problems that we are trying to solve are complex. Hence, the complexity of the landscape acts as the best way to test my potential and improve my ability to try new things”
Our purpose at DT Digital Labs is to help customers of Telekom go digital & hence gain trust. That is what we have been doing in the last two years. Our single code base now supports 10 countries. Our centrally developed self-service application boasts of a 56% customer penetration rate. Our microservice architecture contrives multitenancy, multi-lingual, multi-currency, and featured flag based development. Some numbers at a glance
· 15M API requests per day
· 2000 TPS on internal platforms
· 10B+ searchable documents
· 220M campaign queries a day
· 125M events generated per day.
A best in class e-commerce experience, single Telekom app for self-care, omnichannel TV experience (App, web, STB), and improving customer’s life by providing the most reliable Wi-Fi experience, are just some of the interesting problems our team is trying to solve, even as we speak. But this is just the tip of the iceberg & there is so much more to dream, build & achieve.
So what’s makes us such a vibrant company when numerous other companies are doing similar stuff?
1. Customer Obsession
2. Developer’s — First and Foremost
3. Empathy & Compassion
Customer obsession has been a core driver since inception & we are driven by the purpose of transforming people’s lives & changing the way they not only interact with us a Telco, but the way they access information, healthcare, education, entertainment, and lifestyle in general entertainment, and lifestyle in general.
Some habits we live & breathe by which make us a customer-centric organization:
- We align every employee to be part of the customer journey & success
- We put customers at the heart of every decision we make
- We value the quality of the product over quantity of code check-ins
- Decisions are driven by data insights and customer feedback
- We analyze customer data repeatedly and strive to continuously improve the customer experience.
That’s what it means to be customer-obsessed. If you ever settle, you’re doing it wrong.
So how do we breathe life into this term customer obsession?
Data, Data & More Data-Driven Insights — Customer Journey Insights Dashboard
This philosophy is based on tracking the customer insights through well informative dashboards, customer feedbacks & surveys, regularly monitoring the comments over the app store, and customer-focused group experiments. Our customer platforms generate a massive amount of data that is logged and analyzed to deliver an excellent customer experience as well as improving the quality. Constantly improving the experience for customers is a never-ending goal for us.
Developers — First and Foremost
Depending on the organization’s size and needs, being developer-focused can mean different things. In this extraordinary situation(COVID), gone are the days that developers are attracted to perks like vending machines, video games, free organic juices, pool tables, etc. Developers work best in a loose and non-corporate environment. They look forward to the organizations that provide overall growth — professionally and personally.
Being at the heart of Deutsche Telekom, we encourage a start-up culture with a huge focus on developers. Making developers feel special is key to DT Digital Labs’ success. We believe that when a developer gets to work with us, it should feel delightful.
Why we think, We are developer-focused?
- We are heavily relying on Open Source technologies. We have developed a “default to open source” mentality to every project we work on. It does allow developers to explore solutions and try out new things. A great example of it using the community version of Keycloak (Identity and Access Management) & Sylius (e-commerce sales catalog) internally and customizing to scale up for our business needs. Developers always have the option to try various alternatives, pick the one that’s going to work, and modify this with the customized needs. It allows them to be flexible, agile, able to start quickly, and inexpensively.
- There are several real examples of developer’s initiatives that are directed into full-fledged products. Their intention wasn’t only to just build something that “just worked”. But they have built something that solved the problems they faced as developers. OneView (Real-time monitoring and tracking), Page Builder, Campaign Management, Data Lake, and numerous platform (currently live) examples that are initiated by the developers.
- In DTDL, developers perceive an opportunity to write the first line of code. We have so many platforms to build. Me being a engineering leader can vouch that, this is such a delightful feeling when you start writing code from scratch and turn your imagination into reality. Developers get a chance to experiment with different ideas and technologies. We encourage our developers to take complete ownership and care about the product’s success.
- We focus a lot on the re-usability of internal components and libraries. DTDL has a kind of Pseudo internal open source contribution culture. Anyone can publish a new set of the code or change the code of the existing platform (with a code review process). Many platforms e.g. CMS, sales catalog, campaign, etc are commonly used across multiple projects.
- Providing the right tools and learning opportunities is a must to have for the growth of the developers. DTDL is committed to providing the ultimate learning environment. Every developer has access to Percipio & Coursera licenses. Developers nominate themselves for the monthly tech sessions to promote a learning culture. We have rewarded our top learners with Nano degree programs
Empathy & Compassion
Making a developer feel like he is part of the family from day one, is what makes this a special place.
It is all about the emotions & connections that we forge together as a team. It is not so much about the ‘unrestricted leave policy’ but an understanding manager who says ‘Don’t worry! I got your back’. It is about a team that pitches in to pick up work when you need to be at home to celebrate Halloween with your kid. Wherever there is a necessity, the whole team will jump in to help extinguish it. That’s what makes this team special.
But how do we build such a culture of care & compassion?
- We pause, reflect, connect and listen — Be it the head of a function, a colleague, or even the People Team, everyone makes the effort to listen, reflect & we never refrain from asking questions or getting feedback. Be it coffee connects with leaders or chit chat sessions with leads & peers, everyone makes the time to invest in relationships & people. We have succeeded to maneuver the corona situation & virtual ways of working & have ensured people take out the time for a Teams call with colleagues & peers.
- We empathize — whether it is adapting to new ways of working, introducing policies that are more aligned to the current needs of the team, or asking the right questions to ensure we understand what the team is feeling. The year 2020 has tested us on how empathetic we are & whether it is an open leave policy, better insurance coverage to support the medical needs amidst the corona, remote working, or setting up a home office, we tried to always help our team feel safe, secure & taken care of by the organization.
- Flexibility & Respect — In today’s pandemic times this is even more important. We make time to talk 1:1 about work issues, understand the need for flexible working hours and time off for personal, family, or medical issues & respect personal working styles.
Other little things we do that adds up for developers
- Developers own the code and we count on them. We encourage rewards every month, quarter, and year. We do monthly spot awards, quarterly top performer awards, a wall of fame to recognize the fantastic work done. In a recent example, for recognition of the achievement, we allowed the team to watch the champions league live match in Munich.
- We beget an open and non-hierarchal culture. We boost our developers to have a voice when a system or process is not working. Anyone can reach out to the leaders courageously.
- We celebrate failure & encourage people to share the stories of tech failures & errors, with the intent of learning from each other on how to not to repeat the same.
We are still a growing team and won’t shy in saying that, we are not perfect. However, we try to do every possible step to make our developers and customers happy. We won’t stop till Deutsche Telekom goes digital. #wewontstop
Stay tuned for some interesting reads coming in this space :)
References: https://subvert.substack.com/p/stripe-building-a-developer-cult
