Month: October 2021

The present era of connection that we live in demands businesses not just meet customer needs but anticipate them and then, exceed them. A volatile market, fluctuating consumer demands, and rising competition, however, make the playing field more complex. With the consumer firmly in the driver’s seat, delivering elevated customer experiences emerges as the key differentiator that separates successful organizations from the not-so-successful ones.

Pivoting to a digital-first mindset is now imperative to succeed in a world where competition is getting increasingly advanced and data, more detailed. While telecom organizations are leveraging data from the smartphone that has become ubiquitous in our lives, it is also time to leverage the world of wearables and connected devices to capture data that can drive demand and influence customer decision-making.

Research estimates that the wearable technology market will be worth $45 Billion with over 250 million annual unit shipments by the end of 2021. It is expected to grow at a CAGR of 22% between 2018 and 2021. In keeping with this trend, mobile connectivity and associated advanced capabilities – such as VoLTE (Voice over LTE) are also being integrated into the wearable and smart devices ecosystem. Research suggests that these devices will help “mobile operators drive more than $12 Billion in service revenue by the end of 2021, following a CAGR of approximately 36% between 2018 and 2021.”

For telecom providers, this also signals a more nuanced way to look at the commoditization of telecom services especially as the world becomes more software-defined. Wearable technology integration into the lives of the consumer is a sign of their willingness to engage with wearable tech. It demands expanded wireless capacity and the decreasing cost of data. However, it means access to more personal and contextual data that can help them deliver more personalized experiences to drive elevated customer experiences.

To succeed in today’s marketplace, combining wearable data with consumer data can give telecom providers the insights they need to deliver personalization to influence customer satisfaction and ensure customer retention.

Smartwatch data, in-ear virtual assistants, wearable technology: smartwatches, smart glasses, headsets, smart headphones, and other internet-enabled devices all generate a huge volume of data, all of which is personal and contextual to the consumer. Using this data telecom providers can:

Identify sales and upselling opportunities

Customer data generated from wearable devices present insights into their habits, choices, and preferences. Telecom providers can leverage this data and analyze patterns and trends and identify cross-selling and upselling opportunities. This data can also be used by customer service executives to engage with the customer more meaningfully and present them with services and offers that are contextual to their needs and requirements and converse with more certainty.

Improve customer support

By leveraging data generated from wearables and smart devices, telecom companies can also personalize the customer support experience. Following a robotic script and taking the customer through a series of questions only erodes goodwill and further aggrieves an irate customer. Following this script also makes it harder for the customer service representative to connect with the customer in a more meaningful manner.

Using data generated from this device network allows the customer service team to identify the points of conflict and challenges with greater certainty. This gives them the capability to better personalize support services and address customer issues more proactively.

Empowering the customer care executive with data can also assuage an irate customer by offering more relevant discounts or offers to compensate for issues faced by the customer. This personalization not only ensures better customer management but also ensures better customer satisfaction.

Customer support teams can also proactively track customer issues and proactively solve them before the customer reaches out for support. Providing a detailed understanding of the issue further builds credibility and drives customer loyalty.

Personalize marketing

Personalizing marketing experiences is of critical importance today to drive customer adoption and advocacy. It plays a great role in ensuring customer stickiness. Wearable and smart devices often allow users to buy products online. Telecom providers can use this data to create marketing plans and offers that are more contextual and relevant to the consumer. A free Netflix subscription, for example, might not be a great bait for someone who perhaps likes to shop more than a stream.

Data from wearables such as Google Glass can be used to track what advertisements the consumer views and takes interest in. With access to real-time data, telecom providers can send localized, context-based content and augment customer experiences with greater personalization.

Using data from these devices empowers telecom companies to engage with the consumer in a more meaningful, and intelligent manner. Data generated from these devices can give telecom companies deep insight into consumer patterns and behaviors that they can use to consistently improve the customer experience at each point and identify avenues to drive usage.

Hands-free tech has evolved considerably from its initial days of allowing people to listen to music or attend calls on wireless earphones and headphones. While this still is a major functionality and significant part of the hands-free culture prevalent today, there are numerous other innovative consumer experiences that have become mainstream thanks to the growth of hands-free technology. Hands-free experiences in cars and larger vehicles are a major sign of how the future of mobility is likely to be influenced by hands-free tech.

Today, nearly all car manufacturers offer a standard Bluetooth-based hands-free telecommunication facility in their vehicles that allow drivers to make and respond to telephone calls without having to take their hands off from the wheel. But this is no longer the most exciting element about hands-free tech. There is a new class of smart devices that are making hand-free communication radically cooler than ever. We are talking about wearable tech – smart digital devices that can be worn and carried around by people. From wristwear to footwear, the global wearable technology market size is expected to be worth over USD 265.4 billion by 2026 according to studies.

While there are tons of possibilities that make wearables, the new future of hand-free communication, it is obvious to ask the question about the value businesses can leverage from investing in services that work with wearable and similar modern technology especially in the highly competitive telecom landscape.

Let us examine the most promising of possibilities that wearables empower in hands-free communication.

Innovative Customer Experience

Enabling consumers to do a range of activities via wearables is the new paradigm of customer experience that several leading brands are now exploring. For telecom companies, this could mean enabling customers to pay their bills by simply talking to a voice assistant like Siri or Google Now or Alexa on their smart wearables like a smartwatch. To offer a seamless experience driven by such innovations, telecommunication companies need to have an integrated customer feedback recognition and service delivery framework that uses advanced conversational technologies powered by AI and machine learning. This will enable them to respond accurately to hands-free activities like wearable-based bill payment instructions.

Leverage Advanced Data Insights

To provide support to customers, it is important for telecommunication companies to have a clear idea of the usage pattern or behaviour of their customers on their network for the duration over which problems occurred. With wearable tech combined with advanced analytics, telecom businesses can identify root causes of issues such as connectivity loss in geographical zones as they are recorded and reported by wearables like smartwatches. This data can be used to build a more resilient network infrastructure and respond faster to customer concerns. Ultimately this helps in improving customer satisfaction which leads to better business outcomes.

Intuitive Notifications

Telecom companies leverage traditional notification options like SMS and Call reminders to inform or alert consumers about any activity related to their account. It could even be a security alert or indicator of spam. However, for all these scenarios, customers get notifications on their smartphones which they might not always pick up and observe instantly. This delay from the consumer side can be prevented by leveraging advanced notification and alert systems that communicate with wearables linked to the customer’s smartphone, like their smartwatch or band. Notifications or alerts displayed on wearables have a higher probability of being noticed by consumers and hence risky scenarios can be avoided.

Personalized Cross-Selling

As market conditions tighten, telecom companies want to find alternate sources of ancillary revenue. Wearables open a new possibility of collaboration for telecom companies wherein they can partner with leading brands to offer personalized services to consumers based on data collected and share by wearables. For example, telecom companies can partner with fitness companies to offer customized subscriptions to fitness programs based on the data collected from the customer via a wearable device. Telecom companies can charge a commission for the cross-selling service on their behalf and bill consumers directly in a single bill.

Wearables are amongst the latest entrants in the telecommunication industry that began to embrace technology as a key driver of value rather than the traditional approach of considering technology as an enabler. Consumers expect a great deal of freedom of choice and device independence while availing services from telecom companies. With wearables coming into the picture, the hands-free paradigm can be propelled into new dimensions.

To keep up with the pace of growing technologies, telecom companies need to have a resilient and responsive digital ecosystem within their business and invest in modern technology solutions that help them drive a unified customer and communication experience. This is where our range of digital services and solutions can be a game-changer. Get in touch with us to explore a range of modern digital platforms and unified communication solutions that can aid your business to scale new frontiers in digital innovation and embrace technologies like wearables at ease.

The telecom industry is undergoing seismic shifts. Investments in consecutive generations of technology are no more a guarantee of a return on capital expenditure. Simultaneously, digital start-ups are overturning traditional products and services of communications service providers (CSPs). Given this state of disruption, telcos need to look at all means to increase revenue and safeguard sustainability.

The opportunities from the web

One interesting area of opportunity is opened up by the internet. This is ironic since data is being seen as the voice-killer in many ways. But clearly, the reality is a bit more complex.

MNOs became a part of the Internet environment with the arrival of mobile broadband services. Interconnectedness arrived between few elements of MNO networks, like Short Message Service Centres (SMSCs), encompassed IF interfaces and unlocked e-mail-to-text and text-to-email messaging. This evolution opened up some opportunities and some risks too.

SMS messaging is susceptible to identity spoofing, faking, spam, and denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. These openings WILL compromise customer experience and satisfaction. Revenues are also under attack from grey routes, which carry the traffic that cannot be billed because they are not subject to contractual agreements.

As per a report byTyntec, 66% percent of messaging traffic is on gray routes

The focus is growing onprotecting the space, even as the openings for revenue gain are emerging.

Messaging has evolved from simple messaging, like notifications and alerts, to real-time user authentication, ticketing, and mobile payment enablement. These new messaging set-ups are deeply tied to a consumer’s identity on the MNO’s network and demand strict adherence to high service quality levels. (For instance, message sources and destinations must be validated, message delivery must be well-timed and dependable) In fact, consumer requirements have rapidly evolved to now wanting real-time two-factor authentication across a variety of apps and app-driven services.

It’s clear that MNO services are likely to be leveraged more and more to validate a user’s identity on the app ecosystem. That suggests the MNO’s role is more than merely that of an access provider.

Other technologies that depend on MNOs are also becoming more mainstream.

Opportunities from IoT

Consider the Internet of Things (IoT) infrastructure, which heavily depends on the coverage and access of the MNO. IoT networks employ MNO infrastructure for main or backup access. IoT devices communicate with platforms, data analytics engines, and central controllers all the time. They send data out and get instructions back. Security protocols would run on the network. Control messages to the devices would also utilize the MNO network.

By some estimates, there will be 35 billion IoT devices installed worldwide by the end of 2020. This massive growth of IoT presents yet another opportunity for revenue generation to MNOs.

The SMS Firewall: Allowing apt monetizing of Application-to-Person (A2P) Messaging

In previous blogs, we have spoken of how enterprise messaging is a real opportunity for MNOs to maintain and increase their messaging revenue. But this is a risk too. Intermediary entities are attracted to the opening to manipulate mobile operators’ security and revenue assurance gaps to evade costs and send unwanted messages.

Mobile carriers did take some steps to safeguard their networks by employing antispam filters and easy blocking mechanisms but they need to do more to enable end-to-end protection. Solutions based on content authentication and reporting also exist. But a comprehensive SMS firewall solution ensures visibility, efficacy, and proactive action.

More traditional areas

Obviously, there is a need to protect the traditional sources of revenue too – voice and SMS. Leaving aside more complex problems like how to drive up usage, there is sufficient room for maximizing the revenue potential of the current subscriber base by reducing fraud.

A good anti-fraud voice solution will allow the MNO to detect inbound and outbound voice call frauds and take the required preventive measures to block such activity. Over time, this will help drive up consumer confidence and trust -all good for sustained relationships and enhanced usage.

As mentioned while talking about A2P SMS fraud, a good SMS solution will be able to actively monitor and blog MO and MT SMSs to prevent fraud and spam SMS activity. This ensures the consumers get only the messages they value and increases their trust in the system.

A drag on prepaid revenue-generating activity is zero-balance subscribers. They sit on the books, but until they recharge, they are unable to deliver any revenues. Rather than treat them as lost causes, MNOs can deploy innovative solutions that help generate some transactions. For instance, a service could generate a missed call on behalf of the zero-balance subscriber and induce a call back with revenue potential.

The enterprise as a revenue source

Enterprises have long been great sources of revenue for MNOs with their use of solutions like International Toll-Free numbers and Premium Numbers. Those services are well-known but there’s innovation-driven evolution possible in the service needs of enterprises too.

Enterprise functions like customer service, marketing, and sales are potential consumers of solutions like bulk and auto-diallers, virtual roaming numbers, and collaboration and conferencing solutions. MNOs have the infrastructure capacity and the skill and experience of managing complex IT backbones and infrastructure. It’s a small step from there to monetizing that capacity by offering data center, cloud computing, and infrastructure support to enterprises in an on-demand model.

That apart, more collaborative and inventive business models are emerging as MNOs come to understand that the greatest asset they possess may be the data they have about millions of consumers and their habits. They are looking to monetize that data to good effect. For instance, telecom operators are building innovative partnerships with consumer product companies and financial services companies to drive up sales and revenues. This is an exciting space with great promise.

Telecom companies are a part of the essential fabric of economic activity in the modern economy. Even as specific revenue opportunities and threats emerge, it’s fair to expect telcos to carry on.

The battle for customer acquisition and retention has become cutthroat in the telecom industry. With more consumers’ choices than ever, tremendously low switching costs, and universal access to new services, the telecom industry is undergoing rapid change and growing competition.

As the revenues from traditional voice and messaging avenues continue to shrink, and over-the-top media services like Skype, Facebook, Netflix, Amazon, and others eat away at the principal offerings, telecom operators must prioritize their investments in customer engagement and experience strategies.

This is imperative to drive customer stickiness and advocacy.

Data from an Ericsson survey reveals:

• An average smartphone customer requires 4.1 days, and 2.2 attempts to complete an interaction with a telco.
• A one-day delay in achieving an action turns into a 30% decrease in customer satisfaction
• Only a third of customers think that their telecom operator understands their needs as a customer
• 46% of customers believe that their provider is hiding behind ‘bad’ technology, such as canned responses, impersonal contact forms, and do-not-reply emails.

As telecom operators continue to battle for customer loyalty, a key strategy to help them differentiate is offering subscribers consistent experiences across different touchpoints and interaction channels.

While operators need to have the right people and processes to help shape customers’ experiences, it’s also necessary to have the right technologies in place. Together, the people, processes, and tools will deliver a foundation for providing consistent experiences to customers across various channels cost-effectively.

It also needs to be said that while focusing on measures that reduce customer effort seems the right thing to do, this alone will not take telecom operators to the next level of customer experience. There are two reasons:

1. They get caught up in fixing existing business models to solve the issues of today’s customers. This restricts them from structurally reinventing themselves to meet the future expectations of customers.
2. They are tackling only one driver (that is, customer effort) of customer experience

Why is Customer Engagement Crucial to Telecom Operators?

Customer engagement is the procedure of improving customer interactions with a business at different touchpoints – research, pre-sales, onboarding, usage, support, and so forth.

Unfortunately, numerous telecom operators heavily invest in enhancing all the customer management life cycle stages only until the purchase point. Once the contract is signed and the service is purchased, fewer businesses actively focus on customer engagement or invest in augmenting it.

This results in:

• Poor customer satisfaction ratings, damaging brand equity
• The dwindling impact of referral marketing programs
• Higher customer support costs due to rising volumes of complaints
• Underperforming cross-sells/up-sells
• High customer churn
• Low customer lifetime value (CLV)

All of the above, in due course, turns to lost revenues.

The lack of suitable customer engagement solutions makes established operators more susceptible to revolutionary competitors like OTT players and digital-first market entrants who are better armed to engage with customers across numerous touchpoints/channels.

Consequently, the legacy operators’ ability to bring their old tactics of customer engagement to a new digital maturity level becomes crucial.

8 Ways Telecom Operators Ensure Customer Experience

Introducing Ease and Usability at Each Step

What more can be done to reduce consumer effort? Operators looking to offer ease and usability have dramatically diminished the number of tariffs and options and eliminated one-off fees. They have also addressed shorter-term options, keeping in mind that unhappy customers locked into long contracts can become social media critics.

But few operators have reduced their small print, rewriting them in plain language. Fewer have achieved a simple, combined fixed-mobile bill displaying a single total (monthly charges, plus VAT, minus discounts).

Several customers don’t understand billing, random credits, loyalty schemes, and unclear terms. This eventually results in more calls to customer service centers and long queues in retail outlets – which do not add value.

While most of these efforts help to achieve a better experience, there are some delight opportunities. For instance, customers can still be surprised by a zero-configuration experience.

Proactively Resolving Customers’ Hassles

Being proactive helps both sides. For instance, informing customers about planned maintenance means reduced effort for business (lesser calls to helplines) and less disappointment for customers (less time spent in call queues or troubleshooting the problem themselves).

Extending that philosophy could mean providing automatic migration to the latest tariffs, eradicating customer hassle (switching) while also lessening operator effort (maintaining legacy portfolios).

Enhancing Accessibility via Seamless Interactions Across Preferred Channels

Accessibility is an opportunity to provide advanced and personalized customer experiences based on seamless omnichannel customer interaction and engagement. Operators who want to delight today’s customers need to start by making swapping between channels hassle-free. The whole interaction history must be available at every touchpoint. For instance, an in-store sales rep can see what a call center agent has promised. Interaction continuity is mandatory. For instance, enabling a customer to talk to the same agent after a dropped call to a hotline. An enhanced omnichannel experience means seamless swapping and smart channel integration. For instance, leveraging interactive voice response (IVR) in a mobile app when customers are incapable of resolving issues and proactive follow-up when promised response times are exceeded. The information must flow seamlessly, between the physical and digital world, for instance, by enabling customers to scan a QR code on a device or printed communication.

Emphasizing on Quality and Performance Over Technical Specifications

Prominent operators are already emphasizing on customer service performance and quality. They meticulously monitor and address the possible deterioration in customer experience (such as dropped calls and low video or audio quality) by leveraging Quality of Experience (QoE) features in the network, Operational and Business Support Systems (OSS/BSS), and devices.

However, most operators need to put in extra efforts to express they care about customers’ perceptions. One instance would be a system to inevitably compensate customers for poor experiences before they complain, turning potential dissatisfaction into a delight. Operators could also innovate their business model to sell a customer-specific QoE instead of data volume and bandwidth.

Providing Flexible Services that do not Confine Customers

Customers expect to adjust the services they purchase in a flexible and personalized manner.Enabling customers to align their product or service should come without standard tariffs or increased out-of-bundle costs. By linking unit prices per service for all (not just new) customers, operators could minimize customers’ reconnections, saving on Subscriber Acquisition Cost (SAC). To limit the Average base Revenue Per Unit (ARPU) dilution in this situation, operators require an upsell strategy as a countervailing measure. An example would be to modify all sliders for present customers to keep them on the same ARPU, then let them pick “pay less” >or “get more.”

Fairness and Consistency are Significant Hygiene Factors

Customers who think they have been mistreated are prone to quitting. Taking care of such “hygiene” factors reduces customer churn. Things like making equal offers for existing and new customers, eradicating small print, and sticking by the service promises are a given. Advanced experiences might include cash-back warranties or a one-click “try before you buy” offers.

Transparency Gratifies the Primary Requirement for Safety and Builds Trust

Customer service divisions of prominent telecom operators must provide complete transparency about the present state and expected processing time of service cases. For example, operator mobile apps can display a customer’s inquiry status, significantly curtailing inbound calls. Where an offer or service is highly customized, customers need to see their CLV-based status, expected service level, and features or services they might have to pay for.

Customer appreciation is the fundamental customer experience emotion

Operators need to connect with and learn about their customers. For example, by connecting with their customers on social media, an operator could augment their CRM data and empower agents to relate to a customer’s personal life (where appropriate) more precisely (with knowledge about hobbies and interests, a reference to latest holiday photos, and so forth).

To Conclude

There are two distinct aspects to administering the customer experience—one reactive, the other proactive.

The reactive aspect requires getting the basics right. Negative customer experiences stem most commonly from incomplete network coverage, uncompetitive tariffs, and bad customer support. Essentially, these three variables are the fundamental pillars of the customer experience.

The proactive aspect focuses on how operators position themselves in the broader value chain —multiple networks, numerous devices, and several service providers. Collectively, these three aspects represent a multi-tiered opportunity: not only more users (and SIM cards) but also more uses (spanning multiple devices) and more recurrent usage (of OTT and other services). This proactive aspect of the equation is about embracing complexity.

Operators must embrace the new open, dynamic, and multi-dimensional ecosystem. Making the most of these opportunities demands operators must comprehend customers’ behaviors and preferences and build strategies that reflect them to optimize the customer experience. By embracing complexity, operators can not only reaffirm their significance but also magnify the breadth and depth of their revenue-generating activities.