Customer Engagement | Globe Teleservice

Harnessing the Power of A2P Messaging to Revolutionize Business Communication

In today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, businesses must constantly adapt to stay ahead. One of the most transformative tools in recent years has been A2P (Application-to-Person) messaging. This has revolutionized how businesses communicate with customers, driving engagement and streamlining operations. A2P has become crucial for all enterprises and MNOs. This has driven market growth, with projections reaching a CAGR of 3.9%, reaching an estimated value of USD 96.9 billion by 2032.

What is A2P Messaging?

A2P SMS allows companies to send messages from an application or software directly to a mobile user. With a high open rate of 98% in comparison to emails which is 20%, making it a critical tool for businesses of all sizes. It enables seamless communication between businesses and their target audiences through automated, application-driven messages. Rich Communication Services (RCS) and its multimedia capabilities have further led to personalization, further enhancing engagement.

Check out what experts have to say about the use of RCS for business communications.

(Youtube video link: RCS and Conversational Commerce | MEF India 2024 )

Common Applications for A2P Messaging

It is a versatile platform, supporting various interactions such as appointment reminders, transaction notifications, verification from e-commerce platforms, etc. These include customer service bots, providing customized and relevant content automatically, enhancing customer experience and loyalty.

How Does A2P Messaging Work?

It operates by sending messages optimized for mobile display through specialized gateways that work with mobile carriers. These gateways ensure secure delivery to the recipient’s devices, presenting the text messages in familiar formats. Optional automated responses can further improve engagement. Real-time reporting allows the sender to track progress as needed.

9 Ways to Leverage A2P Messaging for Business Growth

Two-factor Authentication (2FA): Send one-time passwords to strengthen account security and prevent unauthorized access.
Appointment Reminders: Reduce no-shows with allow easy rescheduling to improve service efficiency.
Billing Updates: Notify customers of upcoming dues or changes, creating a smoother billing experience.
Purchase Notifications: Provide instant confirmations of online purchases, including event details for tickets complete with links.
Reservation reminder: Ensure timely arrival or cancellation for reservations at hotels or restaurants.
Shipping Notifications: Keep customers informed about package delivery statuses.
Unusual Activity Alerts: Automatically alert customers to potential security threats or best practices, fostering trust and safety.
Marketing Notifications: Keep your customers informed about ongoing promotions, sales and special offers, boosting sales.
Customer Feedback & Complaints: Collect real-time customer feedback through automated surveys and response prompts to enhance service quality.

A2P messaging is one of the most effective ways to reach your customers, regardless of the services you offer. By leveraging Globe Teleservices’ A2P messaging platform, you can launch secure and impactful marketing campaigns, ensuring enhanced reach and minimal disruptions. Embrace to improve customer service, increase efficiency, and achieve greater ROI in your business operations.

Customer Experience Trends For 2024 – Telecom Edition

The role of customer experience in telecom is being radically transformed in the wake of increased digitization. As 5G networks, better infrastructure, and newer markets emerge, the telecom sector is at the cusp of a customer experience transformation. It’s also true that in many ways, the telecom industry has the potential to impact the way other sectors build their customer experience. In fact, recent studies show that nearly 76% of customers still prefer a telephone conversation with customer support. This statistic itself highlights the important role a telecom services provider has in the customer experience lifecycle across sectors. Clearly, knowing the market pulse is important for improving customer experience in telecom.

Communication is a key driver of customer experience. Hence, a telecom services provider must know what customers expect in every kind of interaction to deliver great experiences not just within their business, but also to support other sectors to offer the same to their customers.

Let us explore the top trends relating to customer experience in telecom for 2024:

1. Hassle-free onboarding

The digital economy is rising globally. People are shifting more of their common activities into digital mode. The changed behaviors that persist even after that pandemic is behind us have accelerated the trend as well. From banking to shopping, education, and entertainment, customers are demanding hassle-free digital experiences. This is not only a benchmark for any telecom services provider but also a key promise they need to enable for their enterprise customers.

They need to ensure that customers get a hassle-free no-nonsense onboarding experience into their network. Authenticating credentials shouldn’t be a problem. From auto parsing of OTPs to flash calls, there are a host of solutions that telecom providers must deploy to improve the onboarding experience.

Furthermore, they can also act as a gateway agent for other businesses to build similar experiences. For example, authenticating a user’s credentials via OTPs or flash calls can be a standard option for an OTT app or a social media app. Telecom players can be the bridge of trust serving both the customer and the business that wants to engage with them. With platforms like Authentrica, this can be easily achieved.

2. Learning about the customer

Most businesses believe that knowing the customers enables better service delivery. In 2024, businesses will need to deploy more innovative means to capture data from customers and learn from it. In the past surveys about customer experience were the de-facto medium for businesses to gain insights. However, studies say that a typical survey considers less than 7% of a business’s actual customer base for generating insights. The need to go beyond surveys is evident here. This is where a telecom services provider can make a difference.

Telecom providers can capture the preferences or consent of customers for all sorts of communications that happen over the network. That could be permissions for SMS campaigns, WhatsApp communications, emails, etc. It could be to create powerful Customer Data Platforms or first-party data gathered with customer consent. Telecom companies and their customers can leverage platforms like Consentica to manage user consent effectively. Using this information, they can help build better customer experiences based on ethically gathered customer data.

3. Protect personal data

Building trust is a key factor that influences customer experience. As we move deeper into the digital economy, customers are also becoming more aware of the threats that lurk out there. Many of these threats can be addressed if adequate protection is offered for sensitive data. Hence great customer experience demands a more strategic and focused approach towards integrating security features for personal data.

Telecom companies too must follow this trend. However, they have the additional opportunity to become a second layer of protection for customers. As explained earlier, telecom companies can build a layer of trust by collecting consent info from their customers. By building powerful encryption and network protection frameworks, they can ensure that personal data is never compromised by services running on networks. With tools like TxtChain, they can help trace telemarking activity with strict control on how user data is leveraged by 3rd party services. Firewall solutions can be deployed to ensure vulnerable entry points are discovered and neutralized before any incidents happen.

4. Preparing for an exciting journey

2024 will witness further expansion of the digital landscape in almost every sector. Telecom companies have the opportunity to not just improve the customer experience they provide but also drive industry standards across sectors. They can become the supporting framework for other sectors to push their customer experience initiatives forward at an accelerated pace. However, to do so telecom companies need to have the right technology required to build a powerful service economy on top of their network infrastructure. From security to monetization of assets through expansive partner services, telecom companies have a real potential to transform from their traditional roles. GTS is the perfect partner to ensure success on this path. Get in touch with us to know more.

The One “Platform” To Help You Transform Customer Experience

The one factor that distinguishes great companies from mediocre ones is personalization.

Great companies personalize experiences and go beyond transactional relationships to engage with customers and build long-lasting bonds with them.

So, what’s stopping other companies from delivering these elevated experiences?

According to Statista, 80% of companies acknowledge the impact of personalization on customer spending. 62% admit that it has improved loyalty and retention.

Yet, due to fragmented data from disparate sources, most companies are unable to customize.

It’s apparent that companies need a comprehensive view of their audience to understand their needs and tailor interactions.

However, the increasing touchpoints make it hard for them to gather, analyze, and act on the data.

That’s where the Customer Data Platform (CDP) comes to the rescue.

What Is A Customer Data Platform?

A Customer Data Platform (CDP) is a software solution that collects and organizes data from different sources to build a single customer profile. It collects the customer’s identity, lifestyle, as well as behavioral and aspirational data from sources like CRM, social media, websites, and PoS systems. This detailed data enables companies to create comprehensive customer profiles, individualize experiences, predict trends, and accelerate decision-making. It’s called a platform because it serves as a unifying frame for the entire range of applications and solutions that need to access customer data to drive action.

Why Use CDPs?

A CDP can deliver multiple benefits:

Unifies data

CDPs use SDKs and APIs to pull data from disparate sources into a single platform. It creates a customer profile containing Personable Identifiable Information (PII) such as the customer’s name, address, email ID, etc. The unified customer profile can be used by marketing, sales, product management, and customer support teams to improve customer experience.

Improves personalization

Besides PII, CDPs also capture extra insights like browsing history, website visits, and social media activity. This valuable information enables the sales and marketing teams to understand preferences and buying patterns. It empowers them to customize product recommendations and create targeted marketing campaigns to increase engagement. More importantly, the support team can leverage this data to tailor customer interactions. A cohesive, hyper-personalized approach can help companies boost customer retention, repeat purchases, and reduce churn.

Makes compliance easier

Companies must adhere to regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to build customer trust and avoid legal hassles. The centralized platforms of CDPs can help companies collect and manage all the data in a single location. It will also protect the PII details and audit them regularly. By storing all information in one place, a company can easily grant access to customers to view it upon request. This will help companies improve transparency, protect customers’ privacy, and maintain compliance.

Supports data-driven decision-making

In a fast-paced business landscape, companies have to make quick business decisions. For that, they need access to real-time data. CDPs can gather real-time information from different sources and provide timely insights on customer behavior and market demands. Such rich information can help decision-makers forecast trends and behaviors accurately and devise strategies to meet them. CDPs are truly useful in improving decision-making and aiding innovation. It enables companies to accelerate go-to-market strategy and gain a competitive advantage.

How Telecom Operators Can Benefit From CDPs

A telecom operator receives customer first-party data, including PII details, customer usage patterns, travel habits, device preferences, and billing information.

If used correctly, all this information can help improve personalization.

According to McKinsey, telecom operators can boost revenue by 10% and customer engagement by 20-30% through data-driven personalization.

However, only 5% of them are harnessing data to personalize experiences.

That’s why CDPs are so vital for telecom operators. They can gather data about the customer into a unified platform and use it for the following purposes:

Personalize subscription plans and offers

Telecom operators can use CDPs to analyze usage patterns and recommend relevant subscription plans. For example, they can suggest unique roaming plans for frequent travelers or internet plans for remote professionals. This will help them deviate from the usual one-size-fits-all offerings and improve retention.

Upsell and cross-sell plans

CDPs offer a complete view of usage patterns, allowing operators to cross-sell or upsell relevant packages. For instance, they recommend location-specific data and voice call plans to frequent travelers and higher data plans to streaming users. This helps operators increase sales and drive revenue.

Reduce churn and retain customers

With the help of CDPs, operators can categorize users based on their activity and engagement levels and launch targeted campaigns. For instance, they can send renewal notifications to expiring subscriptions and display attractive data and voice packages to new customers. These individualized campaigns can reduce churn and increase retention.

Improve compliance

There’s a thin line between personalization and privacy violation. Telecom operators should be careful not to cross that fine line. A data breach or privacy violation could lead to irreparable damages to the operator’s reputation and revenue loss. CDPs can help operators adhere to compliance rules like GDPR. By breaking down silos, it unifies information, improving transparency and efficiency in data management. It can help operators establish data governance standards, improve access control, and track suspicious activities. It acts as a single source of truth and provides more visibility on how data is stored, accessed, and handled. It makes monitoring and tracking efficient.

How Can Telecom Operators Enable Innovation With CDPs?

The telecom industry is evolving rapidly, making it increasingly complex for operators to differentiate themselves. It has become even more challenging for them, with the Millennials and Gen Z becoming the primary user base. They expect individualized experiences from their telecom operators.

Thus, companies need to devise unique initiatives to engage with them. For example, they could offer micro-finance for device purchases or do something as simple as streamlining the digital onboarding process.

CDPs help operators enable innovation #ei, offering valuable insights into customer behavior.

It’s an excellent technology to retain your users, earn more revenue, and grow.

To know more about how CDPs and other technologies can benefit your business, contact us.

The Exciting Promise of Generative AI in the Telecom Sector

The telecom sector is experiencing rapid technological evolution and adoption. Telecom-specific technologies heralded by the coming of 5G and the rise of themes like OpenRAN, and network virtualization are helping improve efficiency and performance. The rise of technologies such as cloud, IoT, and 5G are also helping this sector improve operational efficiencies and elevate security. They are also helping in fraud prevention and helping companies drive personalized customer experiences.

Rising cost pressures and increasing competition are further incentivizing technology exploration for telecom and network operators, CSPs, and others operating in the telecom universe.

Generative AI is emerging as a new force promising transformational outcomes to the telecom industry and helping them navigate some of their most pressing challenges.

Why should the telecom sector pay attention to Generative AI?

AI has been one of the most talked-about technologies of our time. Generative AI is expected to be bigger and more impactful.

Reports suggest that the Generative AI market is to grow a staggering US$1.3 trillion in the next 10 years. The global Generative AI in telecom market size, estimated at USD 150.81 million in 2022, is expected to touch approximately USD 4,883.78 million by 2032.

Generative AI could find many applications in telecom and has a large impact area. For instance, it could allow telcos to work with huge data volumes and give them insights into identifying patterns to drive a positive impact on the bottom line. It promises to create opportunities to redefine how the telecom sector operates, engage with customers, optimize services, secure operations, and drive profits.

Generative AI seems to have the potential to solve complex problems and find several application areas in the telecom ecosystem.

Some of them are:

Network performance optimization

Telecom networks are vast and complex. Thousands of interconnected components run this ecosystem. Network reliability and performance are of paramount importance.

Generative AI can improve the performance, efficiency, and reliability of telecommunications networks to satisfy the ever-increasing demands of different customer segments. The technology can also support 5G initiatives by providing intelligence for load balancing and traffic shaping.

CSPs can use Generative AI solutions to unearth advice from vast amounts of unstructured data. This helps in network performance optimization, operating cost management, avoiding over or under-provisioning resources, and overall network management improvement.

Resource planning, management, and optimization

Telecos can now use the power of Generative AI to plan and build networks more efficiently to improve network performance and improve costs. This technology allows telcos to extract insights from unstructured data. This allows them to analyze data from sources such as social media, emails, customer calls, etc. to predict future demand for services.

It can analyze large data sets on network usage and predict where resources are likely to be needed. Better resource allocation capabilities directly translate to better user experience, improved customer experience, and more cost optimization.

Security and fraud detection

AI has been at work helping telcos enhance the security of their networks for a while now. With Generative AI telcos can examine larger, unstructured data sets, and set rules and user behaviors. This allows them to identify patterns that detect malicious activities and attacks proactively and effectively.

Generative AI allows telcos to move beyond static rules to address rapidly evolving and advanced threats targeting CSP networks. Algorithms that adapt to the changing threat landscape, automate anomaly detection and enable automatic remediation actions. These can present relevant data to human security analysts for faster issue detection and resolution.

Enable innovation and accelerate R&D

One of the emerging challenges in the telecom sector is the rapidly evolving regulatory landscape. Maintaining data privacy and security is becoming important for compliance with regulations like GDPR.

Generative AI can generate large volumes of synthetic data. This makes it uniquely positioned to help telecom companies and CSPs fuel innovation exploration and accelerate research and development.

Synthetic data resembles real data. It can thus be used to test and develop solutions. It can also be used to drive analytics and probabilities without exposing customer/sensitive information. This helps telcos drive their innovation agendas while maintaining data privacy, mitigating risks, and ensuring compliance.

Customer Experience

Generative AI presents numerous opportunities to influence customer experience. These range from user behavior modeling to predict customer response to new services, pricing models, and network changes. It could also be possible to identify ways to enhance service delivery with generative AI-powered chatbots as well as to adopt more intelligent CRM systems.

Intelligent virtual assistants can help the telecom sector improve operational efficiencies by relieving customer service agents of routine tasks and freeing them up for more complex assignments.

Generative AI can be used to power CRM systems and analyze extensive real-time data to gain deep insights into customer behavior. It helps companies identify potential churn risks, reduce response times, and enhance support experiences. Gen AI can analyze customer interactions, sentiment, and behavior data to grasp customer sentiments and preferences, foresee customer requirements and preemptively tackle potential concerns.

Smart Billing

Telcos can add greater intelligence to billing systems, increase billing accuracy, and reduce manual work and human errors with Generative AI. The technology can analyze customer usage data and behavior patterns and assist in creating personalized billing plans that improve customer satisfaction and reduce billing disputes.

Generative AI also finds application in fraud mitigation with a powerful algorithm ecosystem that examines trends and abnormalities in network data. The telecom sector can look at Generative AI to prevent phishing, sim-card cloning, and other security vulnerabilities and protect sensitive infrastructure and consumer data from unauthorized access or attacks.

Generative AI holds tremendous potential to drive transformational outcomes in the telecom sector. It will be interesting to see how the industry progresses to adopt it.

Messaging – Latest Trends, Influences, And Technologies To Watch

Circa December 1992, a test engineer sent a Christmas greeting SMS to his colleague. That was the first SMS sent to someone ever. Since then, SMS has become one of the most widely used forms of communication. It remains popular and continues to grow despite being there for 30 years and the advent of different messaging apps like WhatsApp. Data Bridge Market Research shows that the SMS market will grow at a CAGR of 21.26% by 2030.

While SMS is widely known for person-to-person interactions, a staggering number of enterprises use application-to-person (A2P) messaging to interact with customers for an array of important applications. They send automated messages from applications to individuals to inform or promote new offers or send transactional messages, they use it to authenticate and onboard new customers and for several other reasons.

In fact, it is so effective that enterprise communication over SMS receives 20x more read rates and 30x more call-to-actions than Emails.

No wonder, the market size of A2P messaging is predicted to become $78.2 billion by 2028.

This popularity has led to enterprises experimenting with new forms of messaging for greater customer engagement, tighter security, and easier operations.

Here are a few trends enterprises must know to unlock the full potential of messaging.

Five Trends Of Messaging Enterprises And Mobile Operators Must Know

Customers “want” messages from enterprises

As customers become wary of the incessant barrage of app notifications, enterprises find SMS becoming even more effective in communicating with customers. They are non-intrusive and have a better response and open rates than emails and other forms of communication. Evidently, customers seem to prefer SMS messages. According to a survey, 42% of customers found messaging to be a non-intrusive form of communication with enterprises. 41% of customers thought it was a great way for enterprises to inform them about new offerings and opportunities.

As more customers and enterprises prefer messaging, businesses will continue to prioritize its use. One trend that’s likely to surge in the next year is enterprises using SMS for better lead generation and conversion.

AI-based SMS is coming

According to an Infosys survey, 78% of customers prefer purchasing from brands with offers targeted to their interests and preferences. It helps in increasing conversions and improving customer loyalty. But typically, enterprises use the spray-and-pray method while sending bulk SMS to customers. Such messages receive sub-optimal responses from customers. To improve open rates and conversions, enterprises will begin to personalize messages. AI-powered SMS can do that.

AI-driven SMS technologies analyze customer data and help enterprises send tailored messages to customers. For example, marketers can analyze a customer’s purchasing history and use AI to send cross-sell or upsell offers over SMS to them. This will enhance content relevance, customer engagement, and response rates.

SMS becomes a prime customer service channel

According to Gartner, 80% of customer service-focused enterprises will abandon native mobile apps in favor of messaging by 2025. No doubt, driven by the knowledge that most customers prefer using SMS and messaging apps like Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp over service apps. Customers also find it more convenient than calling the customer service number.

Considering the customer’s preferences, enterprises and mobile operators will focus on using messaging to inform customers seeking service. SMS can be used to send reminders and follow-up messages to customers, get feedback, and send transactional messages in real-time.

Authentication services are the fastest-growing segment

With the rise in fraud, enterprises, and mobile operators have been relying on authentication services to prevent fraud. They authenticate the user’s credentials through two-factor authentication (2FA) or one-time password (OTP). This provides an additional security layer and establishes secure and reliable communication with the recipient. It reduces the risks of unauthorized access, prevents data loss, and provides a safe messaging experience to customers. The Banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) sector is one of the most active users of authentication services due to the sensitivity of transactions. Enterprises and mobile operators will invest more in authentication services to validate customers’ identities and secure data.

Conversational SMS is becoming popular

Although customers prefer messaging over calls, they find spam messages and one-way communication overwhelming. Sometimes, customers ignore messages where they see no scope for interaction. Conversational SMS can solve this problem. Conversational SMS mimics human conversations between people. Enterprises and mobile operators can use it to collect feedback, increase participation in quizzes, surveys, and polls, and improve engagement. It can also be used to authorize a customer’s identity.

The Growing Concerns In Messaging And How Can You Alleviate Them

The sustained popularity of SMS has also given rise to security concerns. Rising threats like grey routes and fake traffic bots erode mobile operators’ and enterprise revenue. Recently, Elon Musk revealed that X (earlier Twitter) was scammed and lost $60 million a year through SMS texts. Musk said X could ascribe about a third of its reported total losses in 2021 to these scams.

Only technologies like SMS firewalls, artificial intelligence, and machine learning (AI/ML) solutions can alleviate these issues.

At Globe Teleservices, we have been building A2P SMS communication solutions and products to help enterprises and mobile operations enhance security.

A2P SMS solutions, for instance, help enterprises and mobile operators enhance security, customer experience, and compliance.

Our products, like Armour, help mobile operators eliminate all types of SMS fraud originating from local and international market sources. It uses deep machine learning to prevent fraud like SIM farming, interconnect scams, and secure networks.

If messaging is your primary form of communication with customers, consider using these solutions. They will secure customer communication, protect revenue, and provide a great experience to your customers.

The Complexities of an Omnichannel Consumer Experience

Customers remain loyal to brands that can deliver a consistent and personalized omnichannel experience. In fact, a 2021 report outlined that 59% of consumers would prefer communicating with a brand that facilitated seamless communication across channels. However, delivering such an experience is easier said than done for enterprises. A host of challenges hinder this delivery. Let’s profoundly discuss those and understand how they can be addressed.

The Challenge of Delivering an Excellent Omnichannel Experience

Back in 2017, the Harvard Business Review published a famous study of 46,000 shoppers. The study outlined how 73% of the shoppers leveraged multiple channels throughout their shopping journey. These shoppers were labeled as “omnichannel customers.”

Today, an omnichannel customer experience for enterprises is about seamlessly accommodating the customer journey across various channels. Each touchpoint effectively promises a point of sale.

At its core, an omnichannel strategy enables brands to get a 360-degree view of their customers and focus on resolving their problems and queries.

However, in the competitive telecom market, it’s becoming difficult for service providers to meet customer expectations. Here’s a rundown of the main challenges they face when dealing with omnichannel consumers:

Channel Integration

Channel integration in the context of an omnichannel engagement approach is fairly complex. Enterprises need to integrate all the communication channels and the systems accommodating them. For instance, they must integrate the website chatbot with the product recommendation system. But this is easier said than done because enterprises often find it difficult to:

Remove and replace legacy systems that haven’t been designed with omnichannel capabilities in mind.
Reduce data silos cropping up due to inter-departmental and software system fragmentation.
Bring technical resources onboard that can help design, implement, and improve technological framework supporting omnichannel engagement.
Manage the security concerns associated with the exchange of sensitive customer data between channels and enterprise systems.

What enterprises need is an API-first approach, a unified communications platform, cross-channel analytics, etc. These can help create synergy between channels for efficient customer experience management. Notably, implementation of such solutions requires thorough assessment of vendors.

Customer Self-Servicing

Along with an omnichannel experience, consumers expect self-service options. While businesses realize the need to set up a framework to accommodate self-service, they still fall short of expectations. As per McKinsey’s 2022 survey, around 77% of respondents had built digital care platforms. However, only 10% of those platforms were scalable and fully adopted by customers. In fact, only 20% of the platforms were highly integrated.

Without a concrete technology framework, most telecom providers would struggle to provide self-servicing options to consumers. Of course, AI-powered customer communication solutions can help address this problem. But for their implementation as well, brands need a well-thought-out strategy.

Customer Expectations

The telecom industry still suffers from a high customer churn rate, owing to customers repeatedly switching operators. This increases costs on the acquisition end and a loss of referrals. That’s never a good sight.

Providing excellent service to omnichannel consumers is challenging in the absence of a robust technological framework. With immense competition in the space, it’s essential that businesses:

Constantly monitor satisfaction scores using KPIs relevant to specific engagement channels.
Invest in modern infrastructure, software solutions, and skilled personnel.
Aim towards getting a unified view of customers to personalize services and resolve issues before they escalate.
Communicate honestly about service disruptions, pricing changes, and other critical matters directly linked with customer engagement.

How CPaaS Is the Best Solution for Omnichannel-Related Challenges

Telecom companies need a more coherent approach to implementing an omnichannel strategy. As consumers expect an omnichannel experience, telecom companies are best served by adopting cloud technologies like Communications Platform-as-a-Service (or CPaaS). With CPaaS, they can leverage the benefits of a real-time communication platform. This platform can help realize improved customer experience, cost reduction, and more profound customer engagement.

Here are some of the CPaaS features that make it the best solution to address omnichannel-related challenges in the telecom sector:

Seamless Integration

With CPaaS, companies can easily integrate customer communication with existing third-party applications or services like CRM. With an integrated CRM system, they can improve customer service, improve lead management, and track customer conversions.

Customizable Solution

CPaaS platforms are easy to customize according to the business needs. With customizable APIs and SDKs, developers can integrate call functionalities into their applications. They can do this by using core programming or low-code development tools.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

CPaaS platforms (powered by AI) can deliver high-quality communication while minimizing network latency. Besides, AI-related capabilities like facial recognition, text-to-speech conversion, and analytics can further drive customer engagement.

Campaign Management

With CPaaS, telecom companies can create and customize marketing campaigns for their target customer base. Furthermore, they can track and monitor real-time campaign performance specific to each relevant channel.

The Way Forward

With the emergence of omnichannel consumers, telecom companies have a massive opportunity to improve engagement at every touchpoint. However, this requires them to overcome the various challenges discussed above.

Favorably, with the cloud-powered CPaaS platform, telecom companies can help realize a unified and integrated customer experience across various channels. CPaaS platforms also add relevance and context to customer conversations over their preferred channels.

At Globe Teleservices, we offer the cloud-powered CPaaS platform as a customer engagement solution for telecom companies. From CRM integration to chatbots, it houses capabilities to streamline customer engagement across operational channels.

Interested in learning more about how it can transform the omnichannel experience? Get in touch today!

Top Trends, Influences, and Technologies Driving Telecom Product Development

Today, almost every business can find at least one telecom product within their digital ecosystem. From voice call-enabled services to SMS authentication, they help companies elevate their digital experience significantly.

But, it’s noteworthy that the need for a communications solution has transformed over the years. To understand the trends driving telecom product development, it’s essential to granularly understand this evolved need.

Why Are the Demands From a Telecom Product Different Today from the Past?

Earlier, telecom companies were only seen from the perspective of a network provider building and maintaining the communication hardware. But fast forward to today, telecom companies are strategic partners. They enable businesses of all sizes to scale and succeed with their digital aspirations. In essence, they create the connectivity infrastructure needed to effectively exchange data and information in a digital environment.

Consumers today expect digital-first experiences for almost all their needs, from shopping to healthcare. As businesses expand, telecom products are at the forefront of driving meaningful connections between businesses and consumers.

Areas like customer onboarding, customer experience enhancement, security and authentication, etc. have been transformed significantly courtesy of modern telecom product development initiatives.

It is certain that at least one of the apps you use daily on your smartphone leverages an OTP mechanism via an SMS or a missed call. A telecom product realizes either of these authentication mechanisms. Similarly, there are several capabilities that a telecom product offers to businesses for managing their digital channels.

So, What Drives Telecom Product Development Today?

As we have seen, a telecom product serves as a fundamental building block of modern digital experiences for several businesses. Therefore, development initiatives should ideally incorporate the key traits that define digital experiences.

Let us explore the top four trends that telecom product development initiatives must make special note of:

Seamless Customer Experience

Studies show that 32% of customers would leave a brand after just one poor experience. While building a telecom product, the core ideology that powers every workflow should be to provide a great customer experience. This can be achieved by using customer centricity as a core element of every development initiative.

Speed of Services

Speed is a critical element of customer experience, but it deserves a special mention from a telecom perspective. Today, customers value time more than anything else. Studies show that customer loyalty will improve by over 2.4 times if their problems are solved quickly.

In that light, processes like user onboarding should not take too much time. They often rely on telecom solutions for KYC authentication and user validation. When such products are built, speed should be a major development criterion.

By using solutions that provide easy authentication and faster enablement of Digital KYC processes, businesses can accelerate their customer journey rapidly.

Secure Experiences

We have seen how seamless and fast customer experiences make for great traits in a product development initiative. Alongside them, security is another characteristic that can’t be ignored. As more digital services become enabled and managed through telecom services, it is critical to eliminate any vulnerabilities.

However, preventing fraud will be a major challenge for businesses as they seek to plug leaking revenue and protect customer interests. Therefore, products with anti-fraud intelligence and fraud prevention workflows will be key.

Continuous Innovation

Consumers love innovation in technology that serves them great experiences. This is probably why AI and machine learning have become so mainstream today. For telecom product development, the situation is no different.

Businesses would leverage telecom solutions that can accommodate innovative capabilities in the future. For this, they need to be built with inherent support for AI, ML, IoT, big data analytics, etc. This would allow businesses to build newer customer service innovations by leveraging the underlying telecom framework.

AI-powered customer interactions in the form of chatbots, fraud detection with AI, etc., are just some of the possibilities they can explore.

Wrapping Up

Telecom product development initiatives cannot be judged as a simple endeavor anymore. They hold strategic importance in pushing businesses to achieve better ROI from their digital investments. As such, selecting a solution would require end-to-end analysis of possibilities and potential it can unlock for a business.

Implementing a trusted communication solution for your business is vital, given that critical customer aspects like fraud prevention are on the line. This is where Globe Teleservices can make a huge difference. Our range of trusted solutions has been built to incorporate the latest market trends and innovations. They can undoubtedly propel your digital channels to new heights. Get in touch with us to know more.

The Top 6 Telecom Challenges for Enterprises Working Across National Boundaries

‘Global operations’ is no longer an uncommon dream for companies but an absolute reality across the business world. And we can safely say that communication technology has been a major facilitator of this boundaryless marketplace. The telecom sector plays a key role in helping enterprises build global teams and serve their client base across geographies.

Operating globally opens up more opportunities to serve customers and access expansive talent pools. However, staying competitive can become challenging without the support of robust telecommunications systems that enable collaboration and empower communications.

Some of the key telecom challenges for enterprises that operate across national boundaries are:

1. Routing and Interconnection Challenges

Global business operations need smart voice connectivity across all geographies, as communication keeps all business departments in sync. However, this can become a challenge for enterprises. That’s because different countries mean different telecom operators. Businesses need access to top-notch routing services and interconnects to these operators.

International Virtual Numbers (IVNs) and International Toll-Free numbers also become non-negotiable here. They are facilitators of good customer service and deliver a local experience to customers for such enterprises.

All in all, the challenge arises in integrating voice solutions with multiple channels and ensuring smooth communications. Enterprises must enable customers and employees to make calls from anywhere to any location worldwide. That’s what drives competitiveness.

As such, they need the support of telecommunications voice solutions that provide:

Origin-based dynamic routing
Number handling
Low-Cost Best Quality Routing (LCBQR) services

2. Latency and Call Quality

The days of choppy call quality are thankfully behind us. Seamless, clear, crisp connectivity now drives business outcomes. Low latency in voice calls is, in fact, a business imperative for smooth communication. It drives collaboration and customer experiences in a global world.

While latency between 20 to 150 ms can be barely noticeable, anything in the range of 150 to 300 ms can impact and diminish call quality. There can be noticeable lags and interruptions. Overcrowded networks are often one of the main contributors to such latency.

Therefore, enterprises need reliable international voice solutions. These must provide international coverage and enable easier, faster, and low-latency connections.

3. Challenging Fraud Landscape

Call quality and performance cannot come at the expense of high costs or poor security. As the telecom fraud landscape becomes more sophisticated, enterprises need robust fraud prevention strategies.

They need to build capabilities to prevent fraudulent phone calls, interconnect scams, and international outbound attempts. Further, they have to ensure that the connectivity and performance of their telecommunications assets are not compromised.

4. Real-Time Analytics

Real-time analytics of telecom traffic and the use of new technologies are now becoming imperative for enterprises. This is especially true for those businesses with operations across national borders.

Technologies such as AI and ML are essential to detect fraudulent traffic activities in real-time using pattern analysis. Using intelligent profiling techniques, can also help enterprises take a more proactive stand in risk identification and fraud prevention.

5. High Costs

The cost of international calls can cause a significant dent in the company’s bottom line. With voice call rates increasing globally, enterprises with global operations must look at optimizing cost opportunities.

The telecom sector is constantly evolving, and along with call charges, interconnect charges are also increasing in several geographies. Besides, the sector across the globe offers different floor prices when it comes to floor traffic. This means that the cost of completing a single call can differ across locations and cause a significant dent in the profits.

Identifying cost optimization strategies is crucial for enterprises to contain costs while driving connectivity. The role of voice solutions increases here as they offer enterprises the capability to:

Make affordable international calls
Optimize costs associated with voice calling
Prevent the compromise on call quality or performance

6. Driving Customer Experience

Businesses today are competing on their capability to deliver exceptional customer experiences. One of the key factors influencing customer experience is the enterprises’ ability to deliver contextual and localized experiences. As such, they need to not only tailor product experiences but also deliver local experiences.

From the telecommunications standpoint, enterprises can do this by having local numbers that customers can dial to speak to company personnel. They can leverage telecom solutions to:

Keep up with on-demand customer requirements
Capably redirect calls to appropriate agents who can deliver the localized experience using intelligent IVR

Cloud-based omnichannel customer engagement solutions like CPaaS+ can further help in:

Engaging with customers over their preferred channels
Facilitating hyper-relevant and contextual interactions

All these capabilities influence business outcomes as they help enterprises:

Resolve issues faster
Deliver better customer experiences
Improve customer loyalty rates

The Bottom Line

Enterprises need the support of telecommunications solutions to build high-quality and long-lasting relationships with their customers. To that end, robust, comprehensive, and integrated voice platforms are essential for enhanced call quality and performance.

The right platform can offer the advanced interoperability that businesses need today. It can map out the best traffic routes while providing affordable and cost-effective intercarrier fees.

Apart from this, unified routing, advanced forecasting, in-depth analytics, and live quality assurance are also critical. These capabilities empower enterprises to remain competitive and profitable in a complex and global business landscape.

Interested in learning more about such telecommunications offerings and how they can help your business? Book a strategy call with our experts today!

The Data Domain – Why Modern Telecom Companies Need Data Products

With advancements in 5G technology and the increasing use of smartphones, telecom companies are looking to the future with renewed hope. The global shift to remote working has further contributed to the growth of the industry, with reports suggesting the global telecom market to reach $3.4 trillion by 2025. While this growth is encouraging – and seems sustainable – it also brings about its own challenges, like causing a massive amount of data to flow through telecom networks.

The Data Imperative in the Telecom Industry

Like businesses across other sectors, telecom companies are also increasingly relying on data to run their business and enhance profitability. They need to harness the power hidden in their data to provide elevated customer experiences, an emerging and ever-present challenge for telecom companies. Telecom companies are also waking up to the need to expand their service offerings beyond merely providing communication services. They recognize that they must make the most of the customer data at their disposal to enable a new generation of revenue opportunities by becoming digital service providers.

So, why do telcos need to capitalize on growing volumes of data?

Let’s look at all the things data helps telecom companies achieve:

Optimize networks: Live data analysis can enable telecom companies to get insight into performance issues and take steps to proactively resolve them. Active network data monitoring helps optimize network potential, reduce congestion, and achieve strategic goals amid increasing scale and complexity.
Enhance customer experience: Active data monitoring enables telecom companies to identify when and where to expand capacity for enhanced customer experience.
Improve security: Constant data analysis enables telecom companies to identify security gaps and loopholes, enabling prompt action to prevent fraud and theft.
Enable and ensure compliance: With the telecom sector exposed to regular scrutiny, the right approach to data can also aid companies in highlighting compliance gaps and bottlenecks. This can help them make the right decisions and adhere to growing regulations in a rapidly-changing environment.

But if companies want to act on this data, they need to find a way to rapidly store, process, and extract useful insights from the available data and use them to make critical business decisions like how to personalize offerings to drive customer engagement, retention, and loyalty. And the best way to do this is by investing in the right data products.

What This Means for Telecom Companies

Leveraging data to make intelligent business decisions and driving the business to the pinnacle of success is on every telco’s mind. But wanting to make the most of data is not just about adopting generic big data analytics solutions. Telecom companies have to relook at their existing tech stack and invest in data products that have been curated keeping the precise nuances of the sector in mind.

Designing and implementing forward-thinking telecommunication solutions can enable companies to exploit data-driven technology products that keep business needs at the centre of development. By uncovering detailed insights into every aspect of the business, telcos can deliver with speed, respond with agility, and drive competitive advantage. For instance, the right data products can enable telecom companies to gain insights into network capacity, effectively planning for trunk and route management.

They can also identify fraudulent activities in the network like revenue share fraud, roaming fraud, robocalling, VoIP & SIP fraud, and more.

Telecom-specific data products ensure seamless integration with the existing business ecosystem helping companies achieve the best results.

How To Build the Right Data Products

Despite various market tools, standard solutions can’t address the telecom industry’s unique challenges effectively due to its specific requirements.

To overcome issues around cybersecurity, network congestion, and complex operational processes, companies need highly tailored data products that can cater to telecom-specific needs. These solutions leverage human intelligence with Artificial Intelligence (AI) to enable enterprises to streamline tasks across fraud detection, network congestion, and revenue assurance.

If you want to build such products, you need to:

Make the most of AI-based analytical frameworks to boost confidence in the application of data-driven actions and avoid human errors.
Invest in the right skillsets across different profiles to develop and deploy robust data analytics programs using a low-code AI orchestration workbench.
Look at ways to complement existing technology systems and implement scalable solutions to optimize ROI.
Utilize human intelligence in tandem with AI to improve real-time monitoring, making it adaptable to future changes in business variables.

The experts at our group company GTS Tech Labs have been curating highly-tailored data products for the telecom industry. An example is the advanced product – Grentor, enabling network providers to access real-time data and gain insights on revenue reconciliation, fraud, telecom traffic, and more. It delivers interactive dashboards allowing companies to identify frauds in the network. It can also be used to track and analyze consumers, monitor network usage, and uncover ways to drive better customer experiences.

Final Thoughts

As telecommunication companies experience unprecedented growth, there is a lot they can achieve by building the right data products. By combining AI with human intelligence and low-code technologies, telcos can get all the insights they need to make the right business decisions.

It’s time to invest in the right data products today to predict your peak network usage periods, uncover ways to reduce congestion, improve demand forecasting, plan for extra capacity, and constantly act on live data to drive profitability and prevent customer churn.

Talk to us to understand the next steps in how to go about doing so.

The Future of Customer Experience in the Telecom Industry

Customer experience has emerged as a defining factor in business success, shaped by the trailblazing efforts of digital giants like Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Uber. These industry disruptors have set new standards with their seamless and personalized interactions, raising customer expectations to new heights.

A recent survey revealed that 72% of customers switch brands because of poor customer experience (CX). Likewise, a 2022 survey found that 86% of customers will turn to competitors against the brand they trust after just two instances of poor CX.

The telecom industry isn’t a lot different when it comes to the need to deliver excellent CX. A study revealed that 70% of customersconsider customer experience as a pivotal factor in choosing a telecoms provider. This emphasizes the telecom sector’s urgent need to prioritize investments in customer experience and put it at the center of the business strategy.

To embrace the future, telcos must undertake comprehensive transformations that place customers at the core of their operations.

Latest Trends in Customer Experience in the Telecom Sector

“Mobile networks will be up to 100 times faster and have 1,000 times the capacity than we experience today,” outlines PwC while emphasizing the prominence of the 5G networks. For sure, the growth in the telecom sector is being underpinned by rapid technological evolution. But what impact can these changes and trends have on the consumer experience that telecoms facilitate? Let’s discuss.

Increased Focus on End-to-End Customer Experience Improvement

For successful end-to-end customer experience transformation in telecom, evaluating both short-term and long-term benefits is vital. It’s also important to refine commercial models. When we talk about “commercial models,” we’re looking at the metrics that telcos usually use for defining the success of their initiatives. These might include metrics such as weighted average cost of capital (WACC).

However, the trend now is to focus more on the customer experience aspect of things. The telecom sector is poised to make advancements in predictive capabilities for ensuring proactive issue resolution, personalized customer interactions, and overall higher ROI.

But for this to happen, there needs to be a shift in how telcos view their success. If they quantify it against the traditional metrics, they might miss out on the long-term value that customer focused initiatives can accrue.

AI for Customer Service

Telecom companies are adopting AI-powered chatbots to automatically address customer queries and issues, freeing human agents for complex tasks. For instance, an AI-driven virtual assistant can handle billing, service plans, and technical support questions. No surprise that the global AI in telecommunications market is projected to reach $19.17 billion by 2029, growing at a CAGR of 40.6% between 2023 and 2029.

Telcos must also pioneer the application of Natural Language Processing (NLP) and voice-based customer care solutions to nurture more contextual interactions. This is certainly possible today, especially with generative AI solutions coming to the fore. The AI mix can help telcos deliver unparalleled customer service — all while catering to regions in their local languages and accommodating a very high frequency of requests.

This also paves the way for opportunities to adhere to the omnichannel shift. Today, customers demand consistent service across channels. With the help of data analytics and AI, telcos can ensure smooth transitions between channels while maintaining customer context. The result? Better personalization, increased loyalty, improved CX.

AI for Network Optimization

According to Nokia, networks will become exceptionally complex with the advent of 5G, growing by a whopping 73% in the next five years.

Favorably, implementing AI-powered self-optimizing networks (SONs) enables automatic network quality optimization based on traffic data, region, and time zone. This optimization based on AI technology can refine network resources and reduce operational costs.

Utilizing AI/ML in IoT for improving network performance, maintaining service levels, and protecting data privacy is also gaining momentum. AI algorithms can also analyze vast network data to:

Provide real-time insights into performance and issue resolution
Enhance network reliability and customer satisfaction

The 5G-Led Experiences

By 2025, 5G networks are projected to serve one-third of the world’s population. 5G promises to deliver much faster speeds, lower latency, and increased bandwidth than previous generations of cellular networks. This paves the way for reliable connections and spells the advent of more connected and personalized experiences.

To succeed in the 5G era, telecom providers need to be cognizant of the value of the entire distribution channel, Business Support System (BSS) platforms, etc. Collaborating with startups, technology companies, Communications Service Providers (CSPs), etc., can help curate innovative 5G product offerings for better CX.

How Can Telecom Providers Prepare for This Future?

The telecom sector is undergoing a major transformation, and customer expectations are rising. To stay competitive, telecom providers need to prepare for this future by:

Powering Data Analytics Initiatives

Data analytics is essential for telecom providers to understand their consumer needs. By collecting and analyzing data, telecom providers can identify trends, patterns, and insights that can be used to improve the CX. For example, data analytics can be used to:

Identify customer pain points: By understanding customers’ challenges, telecom providers can develop solutions to improve their experience. For example, customers may have complaints about network coverage. The data analytics team can use historical call records to identify areas with poor network strength.
Optimize network performance: By analyzing data about network usage, telecoms can identify areas where the network can be optimized to improve performance.
Personalize the customer experience: McKinsey’s research outlines that organizations that excel at personalizing CX generate 40% higher revenue. However, the consulting giant also mentions how only 5% of telcos capably unlock the potential of data-driven personalization. It’s imperative that telecom providers monetize their data assets to ensure this percentage goes up. After all, their personalization initiatives can help retain customers, build loyalty, and improve CX.

Partnering with a Telecom Solutions Provider

The future of customer experience in the telecom industry is bright, but it requires telecom providers to embrace the latest trends and partner with a telecom solutions provider that can help them implement the requisite technologies.

For example, at GlobeTeleservices, we help telecom companies implement anti-fraud solutions and drive seamless connectivity with uninterrupted voice solutions. We further help telcos realize higher ROIs via the use of the cloud. The idea is to help telecom companies deliver a superior CX and alleviate challenges related to service disruptions. Contact us to learn more about how we can help.