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Building Relationships with Customers Across Channels

Most companies understand that customer satisfaction is key to long-term sustainability and growth. But delighting customers in today’s digital era requires you to constantly seek their feedback and learn how you can further enhance the experiences they have across channels and touchpoints. Read on as we discuss how you can build customer relationships across channels.

The Growth of Omnichannel Communication

Offering a compelling omnichannel experience was once a competitive differentiator for brands. Today, it has become a mandate for survival. The main driver for this has been the sudden and widespread growth of the e-commerce industry, with the global market expected to total $5.55 trillion in 2022.

As more and more customers across the world use a variety of channels, such as websites and mobile apps (even brick-and-mortar stores and shops), they expect brands to offer seamless communication experiences across each of these channels.

Successful omnichannel communication requires organizations to map individual customer journeys by determining the channels they use, the touchpoints they engage with and the experiences they encounter. And then, they need to create a seamless experience that allows customers to flow from one channel to another seamlessly. But this entails redefining the way brands communicate with their customers.

The Challenges of Building Sustained and Consistent Customer Relationships

Although omnichannel communication is a critical component of business success, the challenges of building sustained and consistent customer relationships are many:

Getting a single view of customers: As businesses get increasingly global, customers are spread across different regions and territories. This causes a big challenge for organizations as they cannot get a single view of customers across different locations and channels – mainly because different teams use different systems and approaches for customer communication.
Quickly responding to customer requests: Today’s customers expect organizations to respond to their requests/demands in real-time and resolve their issues within a few hours. But with customers using different devices and channels, ensuring each customer is attended to via a channel and in a language they’re most comfortable with isn’t easy.
Integrating interaction data from different sources: Combining different interaction channels and converting them to one holistic customer journey requires combining data from diverse sources. More often than not, the data formats are as varied as the number of channels and stored in siloed systems that poorly integrate with other systems.
Delivering seamless journeys: Offering an omnichannel customer experience that seamlessly weaves through different interaction channels is another hurdle that organizations have to cross to boost customer response rates. Brands must be available across different devices and platforms to ensure the different touchpoints are connected, so customers can advance through the entire customer journey without interruptions, dropping off or picking up from anywhere, at any time, and on any device.

How an Intelligent Omnichannel Solution Can Change That

An intelligent omnichannel solution can help organizations understand customer needs and take steps to improve customer experience. Investing in such a solution can allow companies to reduce the cost-to-service, limit churn, and increase customer value.

Using comprehensive analytics, a modern platform can collect insights that matter the most in the customer journey and empower organizations to act on these insights and improve the products, services, and experiences they offer customers. Here’s how:

Reach customers across channels: An intelligent omnichannel solution can measure customer experience across channels, including website, POS, email, mobile app, and more. It can pick up conversations from one channel and continue them across others, delivering a seamless omnichannel experience to customers across various touchpoints.
Get in-depth actionable insights: Using an advanced solution, enterprises can unearth actionable insights and capture real-time customer emotions. Modern and intuitive dashboards can provide necessary insights into customer concerns and needs while presenting ideas and suggestions to improve customer experience.
Respond in real-time: A modern solution can enable enterprises to respond to customers in real-time. The minute a customer interacts at a touchpoint, they can converse with them in their preferred language to boost satisfaction and response rate. Since a modern solution uses an interactive conversational UI, companies can reduce drop-offs and maintain their CSAT scores.
Measure customer feedback:Via Net Promoter Score (NPS), Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), and Customer Effort Score (CES), an intelligent omnichannel solution can aid in measuring customer satisfaction, evaluating the likelihood of customers recommending the brand, determining the level of customer service quality, and more.
Resolve customer queries quickly:A unified communication solution can help categorize, assign and track issues and take them to closure. Via an integrated action module, enterprises can respond to customer queries instantly and resolve them with the expected speed and quality.

Conclusion

Organizations need to provide seamless and consistent experiences across all communication channels to convert customers into die-hard brand advocates. So, it’s only natural to invest in an intelligent omnichannel solution to reach customers across channels, get in-depth, actionable insights, respond to them in real time, and measure customer feedback to improve their overall experience. Let us show you how telecom brands around the world have enabled new opportunities by tapping the omnichannel needs of their customers and users.

The various aspects a call anti-fraud solution must cover

Security breaches and fraud are not new in the telecom industry. As technology gets sophisticated, hackers and fraudsters too get smarter. They are on the constant lookout for vulnerabilities and are relentless in testing firewalls for cracks and weaknesses. Scammers and fraudsters attack, take their profits, and leave before they can be stopped.

In 2021, total global telecom revenues stood at approximately USD 1.8 Trillion. But the amount of telecom revenue loss due to fraud stood at $39.89 Billion. Fraud losses increased by 28% or approximately USD 11.6 Billion between 2019 and 2021.

Voice fraud is one of the top inter-carrier fraud cases. Voice fraud burdens subscribers with huge bills and affects MNOs and their residential and commercial subscribers. Some of the common types of voice fraud are IRSF (International Revenue Share Fraud), False Answer Supervision (FAS), Number Hijacking, Interconnect bypass, and Roaming Fraud. Call Forwarding Fraud, Wangiri fraud (a Japanese term for one (ring) and cut), SIM Box fraud, and PBX hacking are some of the other kinds of voice fraud that are making the chamber of horrors for telecom operators.

IRSF (International Revenue Share Fraud)

IRSF fraud assumes a backdoor revenue-sharing agreement between an IPRS or a communications provider. The fraudster manipulates the telephone service and receives compensation for the traffic. IRSF fraud generates anything between $4 and $6.1 billion in damages.

Standard monitoring solutions fail to identify this kind of fraud easily as it is very hard to sift through large volumes of daily traffic to identify anomalies.

False Answer Supervision (FAS)

False Answer Supervision (FAS) can be of two types. The first kind is the Early Answer fraud where a call connection takes place before the subscriber answers the phone. The second kind is the Late Disconnect fraud where the call remains active and the billing clocks even after the subscriber hangs up.

Number hijacking is also another kind of FAS fraud. Here the fraudulent operator keeps the customer waiting for the connections for as long as possible or until the maximum call timer runs out.

Interconnect bypass or SIM Boxing

Interconnect bypass fraud allows fraudulent operators to profit from the spread between low retail prices for on-net and off-net calls and higher international interconnect rates. This fraud enables the unauthorized insertion of traffic onto another carrier’s network. It is also called SIM Boxing.

The fraudulent party replaces the expensive international interconnect with a cheaper, practically free, routing channel and pinches the difference.

Wangari Fraud

Wangari fraud is a call-back scam. Wangari is a Japanese term that means one ring and cut. The fraudsters give a missed call to unsuspecting subscribers to call back to fraudulent premium numbers. CSPs incur direct and indirect losses because of Wangari fraud.

However, the lack of timely threat intelligence and the lack of a platform to exchange data in real-time impede operator capabilities to identify Wangari Fraud proactively.

PBX hacking

PBX and VoIP hacking is when fraudsters hack into telecom networks and pump up significant traffic levels for an IPRS. PBX hacking is a common and well-known form of telecom fraud and can lead to enormous revenue losses. According to the Communications Fraud Control Association (CFCA), in 2019 PBX hacking was the number 1 telecom fraud method, causing a global fraud loss of $3.64 billion.

CDR-based anti-fraud systems cannot break active calls and hence are not well-suited to prevent PBX hacking. They also perform poorly with traffic disguised with statistical patterns. PBX attacks can last for hours and go undetected in the absence of the right anti-fraud systems.

Grey Calls

Grey routes have been giving telecom operators sleepless nights for decades. Grey calling routes bypass licensed carriers by terminating international calls onto domestic telecom networks using unlicensed and illegal telecom setups.

The illegal operators host their equipment at places where their calls can reach multiple cell sites for the calls to get widely dispersed. They also employ multiple SIM boxes, rotate SIM cards, manipulate calling patterns, etc. to outfox traditional fraud detection systems.

SIM Box fraud is illegal since the operators running these setups do not have the required government licenses. These networks not only lead to huge revenue losses but can also impact national security because these routes can be easily exploited by terrorists and anti-national elements.

The solution

Traditional fraud detection systems often do not provide the depth of scanning needed to combat the growing sophistication of telecom hackers and fraudulent agents. Telcos now need to be able to proactively prevent potential fraud by developing their capability to identify suspicious inbound and outbound traffic streams based on behavioural patterns and anomalous traffic.

Fraud detection systems that use technologies such as AI and ML make the telecom security perimeter more airtight. AI-ML-powered detection systems help detect fraud calls in real-time based on various parameters.

Parameters such as behavioural analysis (from a single Calling Line Identification), call volume, the time gap between two calls, number length, adjacent number checking, call distribution working and after working hours, and the number of unique destination numbers in a given period and consecutive attempt gap of a failed call attempt are some such areas to configure.

The right anti-fraud solution leverages machine learning algorithms for faster and proactive anomaly detection and navigating challenges like Interconnect bypass or SIM Boxing.

These solutions protect the subscribers from fraud, quality fluctuation, and surprise bills and can be fully configurable to meet specific business needs. AI and Machine Learning algorithms make proactive and continuous scanning of traffic routes possible and easily point to anomalous traffic.

In Conclusion

Voice fraud has been and shall continue to remain a lucrative criminal activity. As technologies advance, so does hacker and fraudster sophistication. A comprehensive anti-fraud detection system thus emerges as a critical investment to secure networks and revenue. By strengthening the security perimeter and establishing powerful firewalls driven by AI and ML, telecom providers can minimize fraud risks and prevent revenue and reputation leaks. Talk to us to see how to win against the fraudsters.

Business Messaging – Trends, Threats, and Opportunities

The world of business messaging has come a long way. With positive customer experiences known to increase customer spending by up to 140%, organizations are looking to put customers at the centre of their communications strategy and build longer and stronger relationships. But to successfully do this, they need to move away from standard content and deliver push messages and targeted campaigns that are more aligned with customer expectations.

At the recently concluded MEF Summit “Future of Mobile”, experts from around the world provided several insights into the future of messaging. Read on to learn all about the latest trends, threats, and opportunities in the world of business messaging.

Trends

The future of business messaging isn’t about adopting a one-size-fits-all strategy to communicate and interact with customers. It is about contacting the right ones at the right time with messages that address their specific needs.

By reaching out and engaging with customers over their preferred messaging channels for marketing, sales, and customer support, enterprises can enable easy and convenient conversations and pave the way for great customer experiences.

Let’s look at the top three trends that are going to shape the realm of business messaging in 2022 and beyond:

Metaverse communication: The many discussions (and excitement) around the Metaverse surge have proven time and again that business messaging is set to shape its ongoing evolution. As users begin to shift to a digital and 3D version of themselves, consistent and convenient business messaging will play a critical role in the end-user experience. Right from speech-to-text conversions to communication via virtual keyboards: the opportunities for companies to enable messaging in the virtual world will be aplenty.
Omnichannel messaging: Companies looking to capitalize on the wave of transformation will have to move from plain-Jane SMS strategies to omnichannel messaging. Right from voice and video to other types of rich mobile content; brands will have to engage in conversational messaging – and not just one-way communication to drive meaningful engagement. For example, for customers who have just placed an online order, it would pay to build customer trust by providing real-time updates on the delivery status and wait times while also allowing them to connect with a live agent on demand.
Rich and personalized experiences: Good customer experiences are key to influencing brand loyalty; according to a study, 73% of customers agree that customer experience helps to drive their buying decision. Therefore, to make a difference, companies will have to move away from boring text to rich media, transform how they connect with customers and provide experiences that deliver value. Instead of just sending random messages and campaign content on a bunch of channels, companies will need to talk to customers on channels they are most comfortable with and on which they want to be spoken to. They will need to leverage context history to deliver content, recommendations, and campaigns that are tailored to make every engagement more meaningful.

Threats

Owning, sustaining, and managing a complex relationship with customers is not without its set of challenges. Let’s look at the top challenges companies have to contend with while making the most of all the innovations in the realm of business messaging:

Authentication: As organizations move towards personalized and rich forms of business messaging, authentication will remain one of the biggest challenges to overcome. With cases of money laundering, network infiltration, trolling, IPR theft, and sharing of misinformation surging, companies will have to look beyond SMS authentication and invest in advanced authentication and authorization tools that ensure only authorized people have access to business or customer data.
Identity: With business communication getting increasingly digitized, organizations face a tough time in identifying genuine people and managing relationships with them. Verifying digital identities on the web and validating 3D avatars in the Metaverse requires organizations to invest in modern identity verification technologies to tie each digital identity to a physical human being while meeting a sundry list of emerging privacy requirements.
Security: Security is yet another challenge facing the realm of business messaging. In the digital world, the probability and ease of stolen identities are immense, organizations need to establish strict security strategies and put effective controls in place that protect not only the physical identities of people but also their digital ones.

Opportunities

Allowing customers to reach out to businesses through their preferred channels, giving them the freedom to respond at their own pace, and being available 24×7 are just some of the steps businesses can take to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty. If you want to move away from one-way, static SMS communication toward omnichannel rich messaging, here are opportunities you need to capitalize on:

Leverage practical tools across the mobile value chain to deliver a seamless and secure messaging experience
Raise awareness of issues around trust in mobile products and services within the ecosystem for stakeholders to take necessary steps
Establish industry best practices across your enterprises across omnichannel messaging, personalization, security, and authentication
Create a more transparent, innovative, and fraud-free market to boost business revenue while improving the trust customers have in your business

The doors rich business messaging opens for organizations big and small are many. Unfortunately, many haven’t tapped into this massive enterprise messaging opportunity. With customer-focused companies known to increase their revenue 1.4x faster than non-customer-focused companies and with businesses that prioritize customer experiences enjoying a revenue increase of 4-8% higher than their competitors, to bring conversations to wherever the customer is, you need to evolve toward a more sophisticated and tech-oriented way of sending messages to customers and create connections that count.

Reach out to us to know how you can successfully embrace the latest trends, thwart evolving threats, and capitalize on the many opportunities.

Do telecom companies have a customer experience problem

Telecom companies are facing a deluge of modern-day challenges: right from intense competition to the inability of their legacy infrastructure to keep up with the pace of disruption. While these challenges certainly impact the overall bottom line; another realm of the business that is constantly affected is customer experience.

With high-speed and high-quality communication services becoming a basic requirement – both in personal and professional spheres – telcos are increasingly finding it difficult to drive seamless customer experiences.

The CX challenges plaguing the telecom industry

The telecommunications industry has, traditionally, operated in a siloed manner, focusing only on a standard set of processes and technologies. But in today’s digital era, as new trends constantly enter the market, this must change. Telcos have to make substantial progress toward augmenting their network capacity to meet the constant demand for higher-speed networks. But this is easier said than done.

In 2022, and beyond, the industry will be confronted with new challenges (and opportunities) presented primarily by:

The dynamic regulatory and legislative environment that demands stringent regulations to be met
The constant emergence of new technological innovations like IoT, 5G, and edge that have to be embraced to drive value
An evolving competitive environment https://www.globeteleservices.com/iot-in-the-age-of-5g-opportunities-and-threats/where new-age, digitally-savvy players are mushrooming at an accelerated pace
The huge list of options consumers have in purchasing and consuming high-quality communication and internet services from wireless and satellite providers
The presence of siloed and rigid legacy systems that are not only difficult to operate but also difficult to manage, maintain, and integrate
The growing instances of mobile and cybersecurity attacks that require a thorough and detailed reassessment of security and risk management practices

These challenges directly (or indirectly) impact telcos’ ability to deliver an omnichannel customer experience – regardless of the device, network, or geography. At the same time, manual ways of operating the business and the over-reliance on proprietary systems make forecasting customer needs and delivering personalized services across the customer lifecycle a perennial challenge.

Solutions to focus on

As the digital age demands instant service gratification, consumers have extremely high expectations. Although customer service has always been critical to building and maintaining a competitive edge in the extremely crowded telecom market, with new norms and new economic conditions coming into play, the only way to sustain customer satisfaction and reduce churn is by meeting these expectations.

In today’s post-pandemic era, winning customer trust and loyalty is a totally different ball game, and depends entirely on the quality of service and level of satisfaction. As the pandemic accelerates the adoption of digital channels, seamless customer experiences have become vital. This is especially true as people work from their homes and require reliable service and support 24×7. At the same time, with autonomous vehicles, smart factories, and remote energy grids requiring top-notch, high-bandwidth communication services, it is time for telcos to move from being reactive to proactive. They must make sense of the billions of data points – to meet customer expectations of easy, fast, and first-time-right services.

Right from personalized offerings to efficient device management, quick customer service turnaround to high bandwidth connections – delivering unmatched customer experiences requires telcos to focus on the right solutions and platforms. Here are some tips:

Build a robust customer experience strategy: The first step in delivering seamless customer experiences is by building a robust customer experience strategy that takes into account consumption patterns. Understanding how consumers engage with telecom providers and how they consume services can help in charting out a plan for how and where they should be engaged for maximum satisfaction.
Invest in a modern customer data platform: Investing in a modern customer data platform that brings offline and online data from different sources into a unified location can aid in meeting telecom service expectations. Since all customer data is easily accessible, telcos can have a single and updated view of the customer journey and curate solutions and bundles that best meet their needs and preferences.
Enable seamless customer journeys: Constantly collecting customer data across the lifecycle and analysing it to offer the best products that match unique preferences is a great way to enable seamless customer journey experiences. Using this data, telcos can engage with customers in the most personalized manner and deliver services that are modern, relevant, and up-to-date.
Leverage AI innovations: Modern AI-based systems offer capabilities that can be leveraged to further optimize customer experiences. By measuring emotional and behavioural customer responses to product experiences, these systems can aid in turning emotions into actionable insights that can then be used by telcos to solve problems and drive better results.

In today’s digital era, it is not the number or variety of telecom services offered that matter; customer experience is gradually becoming the only competitive differentiator – as the demand for high-quality, high-speed internet connections surges. As telcos look to disrupt the extremely competitive marketplace, providing an exceptional customer experience across a variety of systems and customer touchpoints is a top business priority.

To deliver superior telecom customer experiences that aid in the consumption of more services, telcos must invest in the right solutions and platforms. This will not only help them in delivering services quickly but also in cross-selling and upselling new services – as and when they are launched. They can adjust to new trends, keep up with the pace of the competition, and continue to serve customers with the same speed and efficiency.

Why it’s Time for Telecom Companies to Modernize their Tech Strategy

Telecom companies have come a long way from the days when they provided basic telephony services. This sector is now a ~$1.5 trillion market that makes all communication possible. This sector is now providing internet services, mobile enablement, and network services and fulfilling the soaring demand for digital services. As customer demands evolve, this sector has to evolve and embrace new technologies too. It must modernize its tech strategy to leverage the multiple opportunities in the market and improve profitability while innovating to deliver greater value to consumers and businesses.

Telecom companies have identified the need for digital transformation to drive competitiveness in today’s complex business environment. However, legacy technology is severely impeding their capacity to pursue a digital-centric future with 70% of telcos struggling to integrate digital channels while others express concern over data security, short-term profit loss, and poor customer experience.

Updating legacy technology makes sense because telcos now must:

Leverage new, cutting-edge technologies to drive competitive differentiation

Giving legacy technology an overhaul is essential to drive competitive differentiation in a cut-throat business environment. Technologies such as AI, M2M, and big data have the potential to disrupt the telecom landscape and enable those operating in this space to improve their business opportunities, increase their customer base, and improve brand recognition opportunities in the face of rising competition from OTT platforms.

While a complete overhaul of the legacy systems might seem improbable at first, building a strategy that enables the gradual adoption of these technologies through applications and processes is a good starting point.

Identify new revenue streams

Increasing competitiveness demands telecom providers proactively identify and capitalize on new revenue streams. At the same time, it is equally important to identify and plug revenue leaks. Legacy technologies and systems are usually siloed and fail to provide a comprehensive 365-degree view of all revenue interactions.

Modern-day technology applications come to the rescue here and provide comprehensive, data-backed insights into performance, areas of improvement, and new revenue streams. This becomes essential since MVNOs are facing stiff competition not only amongst themselves but also from the rising proliferation of OTT providers.

Elevate customer experience

Driving elevated customer experience is another frontier to conquer for telecom operators be it by improving service and driving personalization or making the right product or service offerings.

Modern-day technologies, for example, can help telecom operators upsurge their revenues on SMPP Bulk Messaging, reduce operational costs, and enhance the customer experience. Using the right technology infrastructure, telcos can also elevate enterprise customer experiences by ensuring that the business connects with the customer more seamlessly.

Offering capabilities such as 5G, robust A2P messaging, or enabling RICH messaging also needs a technology upgrade as legacy technologies are not capable of handling the demands of these services.

Drive security and compliance

Given the increasingly complex regulatory and compliance landscape, telecom providers need to drive greater data security. That apart, telecom companies must also work towards improving their security posture to address grey routes and making the network safe as enterprises move towards hybrid work and mobile payments adoption accelerates.

Legacy networks and tech stacks are now unsuited to meet the needs of an expanding threat landscape. Network security attacks, for example, have been a point of concern and remain so in the face of rising cybersecurity threats. Network virtualization is in fact, imperative to thrive in today’s threat landscape to allow operators network slicing to separate network resources and guarantee greater security.

Proactive route testing, home routing, and re-routing capabilities are also essential to improve the security posture. It helps operators analyze the information exchange between two parties and identify discrepancies that reveal suspect routes and direct proactive attention to the same.

Address enterprise needs proactively

Enterprise needs are changing as the world of work continues to experience constant disruption. Digital transformation for telecom operators thus becomes non-negotiable if they want to improve their topline and fulfil the demands of the new normal.

Telecom companies now need to address enterprise unified communication needs along with the usual suspects of connectivity and messaging and develop their capabilities to provide greater customization across services.

Whether it is enabling e-KYC, improving security, providing customized billing, etc.- they need new technologies such as AI and ensure that their IT systems can adapt to the changing needs. Legacy technologies and systems, given their monolithic nature, make it harder to drive agility in today’s fast-paced business environment.

Telecom companies need to identify how they will integrate with legacy technologies to leverage the advantages that new technologies and digital transformation offer. Telecom companies have experienced the greatest challenge in a generation where they have to keep businesses and individuals connected while meeting unprecedented demand for connectivity. Moving along the path of digital transformation and updating the legacy stack is the only way forward.

The Massive Enterprise Opportunity For The Telecom Sector

The telecom industry has historically been focused on individual consumers who consume a bunch of services including voice, video, Internet, and other communication services. But almost every telecom company now finds the B2C market saturated, with little or no scope for differentiation or driving long-term innovation. The current challenges of the B2C market are a great driver to turn towards the B2B landscape to target large-scale enterprise customers to capture a bigger market share and achieve higher revenue.

The enterprise opportunity

Most global telecommunication carriers are largely focused on capturing growth in the consumer segment. But increasingly saturating mobile markets, the constant disruption from OTT providers, and growing price wars have put the B2C market under immense pressure.

Although large enterprise customers already have established, long-term contracts with Cisco, AT&T, Dell, and others for wired connectivity and Microsoft, AWS, Google, and others for cloud connectivity, there is sufficient room for a telecom service provider to provide the backbone for these solutions. This is in addition to the increasing demand for robust connectivity by the small and medium enterprise clients that presents a massive growth opportunity for telecom providers. This is especially evident in today’s post-pandemic age, where almost every business is looking to go digital.

But it’s not just higher growth rates that are enticing; along with growth, telcos also stand the chance of improving their profit margins, especially as digitally-savvy, new-age companies are willing to pay more for modern and differentiated services. As data services act as the foundation on which a broader Information and Communications Technology portfolio can be built, they present a great starting point for telcos to venture into the B2B world via the delivery of Managed, IoT, and unified communications and security services.

The benefits for enterprise customers

In the extremely crowded and competitive telecom market, enterprise customers offer a huge opportunity to drive business-wide transformation. As revenues across the B2C segment slowly stagnate, the B2B market acts as a treasure trove of opportunities, especially in today’s age of hybrid work.

As a massive number of enterprises across the world now leverage the hybrid workplace model to run their business, they find themselves struggling to keep up with the pace of modernization. The presence of outdated legacy systems and siloed tools restrict them from efficiently running their operations, while also hampering the experience employees and customers have with the business.

Although telecom providers have always been laser-focused on consumers to grow revenue through individual and residential services, as the pressure to digitalize intensifies post-pandemic, telecom companies can drive exceptional growth and success by targeting the enterprise customer, allowing them to:

Re-architect, refactor or replace complex legacy communications networks and systems
Move away from wired networks toward more efficient and scalable wireless options
Reduce the cost and complexity of managing rigid systems and bring innovations into the market
Enhance the ability of the enterprise network to combat threats while protecting the business, employees, and customers from cyberattacks
Improve the speed and efficiency with which enterprises within the business as well as with customers and partners
Meet service delivery requests in a way that best meets end-user expectations

The benefits for telcos

Telcos seeking to establish direct and strong relationships with enterprise customers have several reasons to now venture into the B2B market to sell modern and innovative services and fundamentally disrupt existing offerings. Leveraging agile and digital savvy tools can aid in creating new kinds of customer-centric solutions and bring them to market at an unprecedented pace.

Migrating to the B2B space is not only a good way to expand the footprint and enhance digital connectivity; it is also becoming a crucial element of business strategy and operations. Here are 3 reasons why it’s time for telecom companies to leverage the massive enterprise opportunity:

Drive innovation across industries: Unlike with individual customers where opportunities for innovation and scalability are limited, with enterprise customers, telcos can drive innovation that scales across industries. Telcos that capitalize on trends like 5G can enable manufacturers to more efficiently support critical applications, energy companies to remotely monitor their grids, healthcare agencies to deliver intelligent healthcare, and more. Other options include seamlessly bringing together M2M, Big Data, and AI to create a new world of business messaging. The ability to scale innovation across industries is a great way to seamlessly expand its footprint in the B2B space and boost revenue.
Exploit the as-a-service model: With the demand for SaaS-based offerings constantly surging, the enterprise market offers a great chance for telecom companies to keep up with the demand. As companies across manufacturing, retail, education etc. seek greater connectivity, speed, and efficiency, the as-a-service model is a great way to deliver top-notch cloud, IoT, edge computing, Unified Communications, and other advanced communications services to take the business to the next level.
Offer better platforms and bundles: The enterprise market also allows telecom companies to enhance their reach through the delivery of better platforms and bundles. For instance, telecom companies that offer connectivity services to a car manufacturer can also provide bundled services for consumers’ personal devices such as their phones and tablets. These bundled services can not only improve compatibility; they can also streamline the end-user experience.

For an industry that has largely targeted only individual consumers, the enterprise market offers a great opportunity for telcos to expand market share, reach new customers, and drive higher revenue. Although the concept is relatively new, prioritizing digital connectivity to conduct business operations should be a top priority for telecom companies in the coming years, especially as robust connectivity infrastructure has now become the backbone for smooth, resilient, and efficient business execution. Moving to the enterprise can not only aid in maximizing profits; it can also empower telcos to capture the low-hanging fruit and build a framework for continuous evolution and transformation.

A Look Back at the Movers and Shakers at MWC 2022

The MWC Barcelona 2022 welcomed 61,000 physical attendees this year and we are happy to report that we contributed to this number. It was a phenomenal experience being a part of all the buzz and excitement and witnessing it as we used to in the past.

The conference saw thousands of companies from across the globe represent the different facets of the industry. We received the opportunity to sponsor an event organized by Mobile Ecosystem Forum and are happy to report that our event saw great participation.

One of the largest and most influential events for the connectivity industry, this year’s edition saw over 1000 speakers, 1500+ exhibitors, 37 country pavilions. Here is a look at what the key highlights of the event were:

The Metaverse is all around

The tech world has latched on to the Meta concept ever since Facebook rebranded itself as Meta. The conversation around the metaverse has only increased since and it is now being positioned as the next big thing with platforms and services rendered in 3D virtual environments. MWC 2022 saw a rising crescendo with many companies announcing different kinds of Metaverse collaborations. FC Barcelona’s club president Joan Laporta, for example, announced that the sports club would “build its metaverse as part of a strategy to attract new supporters” and leverage the technology to support growth. For telecom companies, this means new opportunities as innovative and immersive solutions emerge and demand robust, quick, and highly-available bandwidth as the enabling infrastructure.

5G connections to witness record growth

The GSMA reported that 5G connections would surpass 1 billion in 2022. This number is expected to reach 2 billion by 2025. By the end of 2025, 5G is expected to represent one in five of the total number of mobile connections.

5G accounts for a larger share of global mobile connections than 3G or 4G has at the same point in their lifecycles. Innovative plans, an increasing number of 5G handset sales, video streaming, and network coverage expansions are some of the key contributors to this growth.

We can now expect to see a greater focus by telecom companies on network capability initiatives to support consumer and enterprise use cases across 5G including 5GmmWave, 5G Advanced, Private networks, etc.

AR, VR, and XR gain momentum

The MWC 2022 also pointed out the rising interest in Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality applications. Supercharged by meta, AR and VR are seeing increasing interest in the consumer space. Advances in computing power and consumer-friendly devices and applications have contributed to the rise of these technologies. These technologies are also finding applications in improving worker safety in industries such as manufacturing, oil, and gas, automobiles, etc where workers need unobtrusive, and hands-free devices to work.

The conference also revealed that Extended Reality (XR) will also come into the AR/VR mix and will roughly generate around generate $1.5 trillion in GDP by 2030, especially as the focus on user experience increases. This is a massive opening for telcos looking to layer business applications on top of their services for greater value add.

Service provider trend updates

The results of the study commissioned by Cavell Group revealed the lasting impact of the pandemic on service providers. The report revealed that one-third of the enterprises would be looking at changing service providers in 2022 as enterprises look at improving ‘band-aid’ responses and move towards enabling a hybrid work environment. Some of the major trends the report identifies are:

Service providers are under increased pressure to create new revenue sources and buttress margins and drive differentiation and retention with unified communication assuming strategic priority across enterprises.
Distributed video, Unified Communication as a Service (UCaaS), Contact Centre as a Service, and CPaaS (Communications Platform as a Service) services will see increased demand as the need to recreate in-person experiences continues
Service providers will have to increase service offerings in data, voice data, and other analytics

The hyperscale and OTT market is expected to become even more competitive in 2022

Enterprises will be looking at tightening up across infrastructures including communication infrastructures to navigate the compliance, security, governance landscape. Ransomware and risk-mitigation solutions will also grow in prominence. These developments will need service providers to become more agile and develop capabilities to deliver new and differentiated service offerings.

The global service provider industry will have to grow and adapt to the changes brought on by the distribution of workforces over the last two years and as threats and opportunities demand a rethinking of the traditional role of the service provider.

In Conclusion

We showcased some new-age solutions in areas like messaging, security, and even AI-led solutions that simplify onboarding for a new age of mobile service provider.

Powerful conversations around edge computing were also a highlight of the event as edge cloud enables architectural innovation to effectively build and evolve the 5G network cost-effectively.

Along with this, there were some major announcements such as Cisco’s Private 5G as-a-Service offer to enterprises to fuel productivity with mass-scale IoT adoption. The MWC also saw a number of product launches and a few big press conferences. Mobile was also at the centre of policy debates as political, regulatory, and telecom leaders debates issues challenging the telecom world and had pertinent conversations regarding economic recovery and creating a more digitally inclusive world.

The MWC 2022 saw some powerful discussions and keynotes and some phenomenal innovations. There was, however, a resonating theme across conversations amongst industry leaders – that mobile technology has been driving transformation. The MWC provides those operating the mobile and communication space a fabulous platform to collaborate, share insights and deliver innovations to drive positive business environments and societal change.

The Coming Roller Coaster Ride for Private Networks

The chorus of industry voices is now drawing our attention to the rise of private networks. As the world becomes increasingly smaller owing to rising connectivity, private networks offer the opportunity to further shrink the world of business while ensuring elevated interactions and seamless communication.

Today, high-speed, ultra-reliable, low-latency, high-density, power-efficient, wireless connectivity has become essential for enterprises. As such it hardly comes as a surprise to see enterprises looking for solutions that help them manage their sprawling wireless LAN ecosystems.

Data has also become an essential commodity in the wake of a growing appetite for 5G and WAN connections. Safeguarding data also now emerges as a top priority.

Private networks are becoming uniquely positioned to offer a solution to these challenges. They promise enterprises the capability to keep their data protected while providing the capacity and superior connectivity needed to realize the advantages of technology applications such as M2M and IoT.

What are private networks?

A private network is a telecommunication network that is built and operated by a telecommunication provider and is built specifically for an individual enterprise. These networks are usually deployed on a single site and extended across the length and breadth of the enterprise. Private LTE/5G networks can also help address wide-area network requirements, such as a utility’s need to monitor a transmission network.

While a private network needs similar elements as a public network, these networks are different from public mobile networks in some specific ways. That said, they can capably manage and provide support to the wide-area network requirements of the enterprise while supporting tools acquired from the consumer smartphone market.

The private networks, however, need spectrum. The spectrum can be leased from a carrier or another spectrum owner. These networks also need a virtualized core, be it as proprietary equipment from a vendor or disaggregated hardware and software from one or more different vendors. The core can also be commodity hardware that runs open-source software.

Apart from containing the database of subscribers and SIM management, the core ensures complete control over how and which users connect and their usage parameters. The other functions of the core include traffic shaping, billing and data plan rules, quality of service rules, and network monitoring-related parameters.

Private networks improve speed, latency, privacy, and security for enterprise network operations. This is so because the network traffic stays bounded “on-premise” and does not need to be sent back and forth to a core network in a distant location.

With the world moving towards becoming even more connected than it is today, the growing value of data and increasing data needs of technologies such as IoT, leveraging private networks seems like an attractive next step for enterprises. For telecom providers, this spells tremendous opportunity. They stand to gain as enterprises lean towards high-performing and reliable wireless networking solutions to drive business outcomes.

New factors contributing to the continuing rise of private networks

The role of private networks in enterprise operations is well understood. As we have seen, the use-cases are many and the benefits clear. The interesting thing now is the many new application scenarios, use-cases, and prospective user segments that are emerging to further drive up the buzz around private networks.

The conversation around digital transformation has become increasingly louder. This has changed how data is viewed, stored, collected, and analysed. This is compelling regulators to contemplate and help create an environment that enables responsible usage of data and other public resources in enterprise digital transformation paradigms. Given this, regulators across the globe have to look at models to drive spectrum licensing by taking inspiration from the existing licensing models across Germany, the UK, or the US (shared licensing) model.

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic also cannot be ignored in contributing to the rising demand in private networks. Schools, districts, municipalities, and other segments that do not fall under the addressable market associated with private networks need digital capabilities. As such they are now looking at deploying private LTE networks to add and leverage digital capabilities that will increase their reach and improve accessibility.

For telecom providers, the focus, so far, has been towards enabling enterprise mobility and WAN networks. However, with telecommunications becoming the lifeblood of the modern enterprise, telecom providers now have ample opportunity to increase their service portfolio and help enterprises embrace digital transformation and keep pace with technological transformations.

However, before we realize the true potential of private networks, telecom providers will have to address the existing network slicing challenges. Network slicing is one of the most compelling capabilities promised by 5G. Telcos will have to identify how to apply different slices to different enterprises connecting to their core network while ensuring that the same is not implemented among different application types and device groups within the same enterprise. As such telcos will now have to understand enterprise IT needs better and build compelling programs to address the enterprises’ communication needs.

Enabling technology adoption, driving digital transformation, and cloud-enabled/driven everything is table stakes now for enterprises. For telecom providers, this spells tremendous opportunity. Talk to us to understand more about the possibilities and challenges of adopting such next-gen technologies.

Is It Time For The Next-Gen Option To OTP?

Two-factor authentication is now a staple in the business world when it comes to validating customer communications. Allowing businesses to verify user identity through two or more authentication mechanisms, the method has been helping in adding an extra layer of protection to any sign-in process and protecting the business against breaches due to lost or stolen credentials.

While receiving a code or OTP on a registered mobile device for one login or transaction has been one of the most popular authentication mechanisms, it is now time for the next-gen option to OTP: Flash Call!

What are the challenges associated with OTP?

When users try to log into an app or try to make a banking transaction, OTP has been the go-to choice for secure authentication. According to reports, SMS-based authentication revenue will reach$39 billion globally in 2022, representing 5% of total operator-billed revenue.

Although OTPs help adds an additional layer of security, they bring with them their own set of challenges. For instance,

OTPs are known to be inconvenient and not very user-friendly. Users who aren’t very tech-savvy often find the OTP process confusing, unnecessary, or even cumbersome.
OTPs demand a reliable cell phone signal as well as sufficient battery life, which when not guaranteed, can result in delivery failures.
Many times, due to poor network, users fail to receive the OTP or receive it very late, requiring them to reinitiate the authentication process all over again – causing a high level of frustration, especially with banking transactions.
Some OTPs that are sent to the mailbox also tend to be delayed or land in the spam folder, which again leads to lost access.
For apps or transactions that make use of 3rd party messaging providers, users are also likely to incur a per-text charge to access their OTP and go ahead with the authentication process.
When using a mobile application that initiates an OTP process, toggling between the app window and the SMS window isn’t always everyone’s cup of tea; there is also the possibility of the wrong code being entered by the user, which requires users to start over again.
Users who need to authenticate a login while travelling abroad often do not receive an OTP because they do not have the international roaming facility enabled on their device.
For users whose OTP device is lost or stolen, multiple login attempts by bad actors can permanently lock them out of their accounts.

That apart, SMS is also the target of fraud and prone to security issues created by routing through questionable providers and grey routes.

What is Flash Call?

As the latest method for two-factor authentication, Flash Call reduces the widespread dependency on OTP, while helping overcome issues about inconvenience, data security, and lack of user-friendliness. It uses voice – instead of messaging – for authentication and is a far more customer-centric and cost-efficient solution to authenticate users, helping verify a user’s identity – without involving an SMS code. Since it involves no user interaction, Flash Call has the potential to disrupt the highly established A2P SMS market.

For instance, the global messaging app WhatsApp is reportedly working on integrating Flash Call as an alternative to OTP. Instead of making users enter a one-time, 6-digit code that they receive by SMS, the new Flash Call feature will allow WhatsApp to directly make a call to their device and verify the phone number – without users having to take any action. Such authentication will not overcome all the drawbacks of OTP; it will also pave the way for quicker verification and improved customer satisfaction.

How does it help businesses?

Flash Calling authentication is expected to near 128 billion calls globally by 2026; here’s how the new mechanism can aid businesses:

Accelerate the authentication process: Unlike the time-consuming OTP process where users have to open their SMS application to check for the OTP and enter it to authenticate themselves, Flash Call automates this verification process – without users having to do anything. As an automatic call is made – and then rejected – and the last four digits are automatically inserted, the device is instantly verified – thus accelerating the authentication process.
Offer a richer user experience: Flash Call allows businesses to have a greater ability to customize the user interface, the overall user experience is richer and more engaging. Since users no longer have to go back and forth between apps, there is a considerable increase in user satisfaction, which, in the long run, can also lead to better loyalty and retention.
Improve conversion rates: Flash Call is also a great way to improve conversion rates. Since users are no longer distracted by receiving and entering one-time passwords, businesses can pave the way for automatic verification and ensure quicker user signup – which can result in improved conversion rates in the long run.
Enable better security: Flash Calls are also known to more secure and amenable to privacy. Since the mechanism cannot be intercepted or terminated by fraudsters, it results in a higher level of security. At the same time, for apps or transactions that are used across multiple devices, Flash Call will make it easier and safer for users to log in to each device separately.
Reduce operational costs: Businesses today end up spending way too much money running their business for activities that span marketing, online advertising, analytics, and more. Common 2-factor authentication mechanisms like OTP only add to these costs, especially in countries where operators charge high rates for SMS and phone calls. Flash Call is a great alternative to the expensive OTP, allowing businesses to save a considerable sum on the authentication process.

As a new technology that can be used to authenticate users, Flash Call is a great alternative to the traditional, costly, and ineffective OTP authentication method. Not only does it enable quicker and more efficient authentication; it also aids in improving the end-user experience through automated verification. Given the numerous benefits it offers over OTP, Flash Call might just become a hot favourite for commerce, payments, and telecom companies. When that happens, let us show you how a powerful new alternative to OTP could work!

5 “New-Age” Digital Solutions that Could Occupy the Thoughts of Telecom Leaders

The digital revolution, driven by high-speed internet connectivity and a plethora of software products and services has become the backbone of social, economic, and technological prosperity today. Communication systems are evolving. As the technology landscape matures and provides more robust solutions to help enterprises and businesses navigate a complex, dynamic, and competitive business world, new and creative business models, products, and services are emerging to fulfil consumer demands.

The telecom sector has a pivotal role to play in this dynamic new age.
Here is a look at five new-age digital solutions that telecom leaders should care about

CPaaS and telecom

The CPaaS market has been on an incremental and steady rise. The demand for cloud communications expanded use cases and prompted new suppliers to enter the market. CPaaS, or Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS), allows organizations to cherry-pick real-time communications features, such as voice, video, and messaging, and embed them into business apps and services. This delivery model allows organizations to customize their communication stack and allows employees to communicate with each other and with customers on a platform and device they want.

CPaaS is cloud-based and software-driven and allows application developers and product owners to tap into and leverage digital and mobile features without having to build or locate any of the expensive physical network infrastructures.

While API providers and network owners are riding the CPaaS wave, it is time for telecom providers to identify how to cash in as well. Telecom providers often do not partner with CPaaS developers since they offer few APIs. The process infrastructure also tends to increase the time-to-market.

However, telecom leaders have the opportunity to get a share of the CPaaS pie since they have access to mass telephony. The cost and routing control, the database of phone numbers, and SIP or traditional switch infrastructure can be put to use to deliver a value proposition for CPaaS.

That apart, telecom companies can extend their services to a wider range of sectors such as entertainment, gaming, fintech, social media, etc. to advance their projects that blend video, voice, text, data analysis, and interactive communications and help deliver better feature-rich services.

IoT

Forecasts estimate that there will be more than 50 billion connected IoT devices in use across the globe by 2030. The greatest advantage that the telecom companies have is that of the infrastructure that exists with mobile phone towers and internet cables infrastructure serving the groundwork for creating new solutions and services based on 5G and IoT.

The IoT market is also expected to reach $381.16 billion in 2025 at a CAGR of 24% as IoT use cases and industry adoption continues to increase rapidly. Apart from the use of IoT in home automation where the role of the telecom providers becomes that of providing exceptional mobile and network connectivity, there are significant opportunities for telecom companies to leverage in industries such as manufacturing, security, agriculture, logistics, smart cities, etc. that run on IoT.

Especially as 5G arrives, there will be a need for IoT specialists to help telecom companies implement the technology into existing infrastructure and business processes. Some telecom companies might need to build their own IoT platforms that aid the development of custom products and services to meet customer needs.

Telecom can not only help organizations adopt IoT to drive better outcomes but can develop IoT-linked products and services. IoT connectivity services and data storage and management are the usual suspects of where telecom providers come into the picture. Telcos can also provide better data and analytics from IoT-generated data and help businesses extract valuable insights from raw metrics.

Telecom leaders can drive real-time asset monitoring by employing extended communications networks in conjunction with cloud computing to collect signals from embedded devices and deliver them to the industry-tailored applications.

By adding IoT to their offering mix, telecom leaders can increase revenues by offering IoT services and solutions, retaining clients, and attracting new ones.

Edge Computing

Edge computing is gradually becoming a mainstay in the digital solutions toolbox especially as 5G explodes onto the scene. Analysts reveal that almost 75% of enterprise-generated data is expected to be created and processed outside the cloud or the traditional data centre by 2025. Most cloud computing giants such as AWS and Google are not ready for operating in massively distributed and remote edge environments.

The need to run edge computing at a massively distributed scale and the increasing reliance on the cloud to enable remote/hybrid work has accelerated the race to 5G adoption. With edge computing coming into the picture, telecom leaders have a greater chance for market dominance. This is because the hyperscale data centre advantage demonstrated by public cloud providers becomes irrelevant at the edge even though the uniform software stack advantage persists.

With 5G, organizations can distribute workloads to run at the Edge and reshape cloud computing and user experiences. 5G offers increased distribution, greater network speed and reliability, and the capability to provide new experiences because of reduced latency. These experiences will be powered by applications running on the network edge in contrast to running in the cloud.

For telcos, this means accelerating their move from a hardware-driven appliance model into a software-defined architecture and developing the capabilities and taking advantage of open-source technologies like Kubernetes as a potential foundation for 5G deployment. Delivering higher performance, lower latency, distributed scale, and stringent SLAs will become essential for telecoms as 5G and Edge become the next cloud disrupters.

Rich Communication Service (RCS)

RCS or Rich Communication Service is now emerging as the successor of SMS services. RCS is a feature-rich messaging service that allows organizations to create richer conversations with their customers. RCS delivers the eye-catching function of OOT applications and also leverages the unbeatable reach of SMS.

WhileRCS is not going to replace OTT applications, native messaging based on RCS is the next evolution of operator-led SMS and will play a big role in the new messaging environment. Customers are also ready to embrace RCS with some major brands already leveraging RCS heavily.

Telecom leaders have to work towards providing fully interoperable, RCS-based cross-operator advanced messaging platforms and develop the right partnerships with aggregators, and connectivity service providers to ride the RCS boom.

AR and VR

AR and VR are attracting a lot of attention today as these technologies are in the next stage of delivering new value propositions. They are now moving out of the realm of gaming and finding real-world applications across industries such as manufacturing, healthcare, worker safety, and compliance, aviation, oil, and gas, etc.

Telecom providers can dip their toes in the AR and VR pool since they are an essential part of the ecosystem. They help with the discovery and delivery segment and help subscribers find differentiated AR experiences.

While telecom companies do not stand great monetization opportunities directly from AR presently, they can leverage AR to drive better operational excellence with improved network inspection/maintenance, repairs, inventory management, workforce training, customer service, etc. using AR-based remote assistance.

Interestingly, the rise of digital solutions and the pursuant push towards digital transformation also demands a convergence between IT and telecom. Whether it is IoT, CPaaS, Edge computing, RCS, or the use of immersive technologies such as AR and VR, the telecom sector has a role to play as the enabler of everything.