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Top Challenges Faced by MNOs When Adopting A2P Messaging

The mobile network operator (MNO) landscape is rapidly evolving, driven by declining profit margins in the retail business. This has caused them to explore new revenue opportunities such as the rising use of A2P (Application-to-Person) messaging for customer communication.

This blog explores the current market situation, the rise of A2P messaging due to increasing mobile penetration and the challenges faced by operators when monetizing this opportunity.

A2P Market – The Current Trajectory

This growth is driven by the widespread penetration of mobile devices globally and the increasing demand for secure, instantaneous communication channels. According to Statista, the global A2P market is projected to reach a revenue of USD 77.76 billion by 2027.

Several key factors fuel this market growth. First, the rising number of smartphone users is transforming how businesses engage with their subscribers. A2P messaging enables businesses to send quick, direct messages, such as reminders, deals, and purchase updates, straight to consumers.

Additionally, the proliferation of wearable technology keeps end-users constantly connected to their mobile devices, frequently checking texts and calls. This connectivity has prompted businesses to actively use text messages for customer communications.

Key Trends Influencing the Enterprise A2P SMS Market

Rising Demand for Customer Engagement Solutions

Enterprises are leveraging A2P SMS to enhance customer engagement, using personalized and timely messages to build stronger relationships, drive brand loyalty, and improve customer satisfaction.

Adoption of Rich Communication Services (RCS)

RCS is an advanced messaging protocol offering interactive media, branding elements, and enhanced security. It provides richer communication channels, making it an attractive option for enterprises looking to engage customers more effectively.

As per Juniper Research, about 50% of mobile users will be RCS capable by this year.

Integration with Chatbots and AI Technologies

The integration of A2P SMS with chatbots and AI is gaining traction, enabling automated and intelligent responses to customer queries. This advancement significantly improves the efficiency and effectiveness of customer support services.

Focus on Transactional Messaging

Text messages are used for transactional messaging, such as account notifications, payment confirmations, and delivery updates. Its reliability and immediacy make it ideal for delivering critical information to customers.

Growth in Mobile Payments and Banking

The expansion of mobile payments and banking services has fuelled its demand in the financial sector. It is widely used for transactional messaging, including account notifications, OTP (one-time password) delivery, and fraud alerts.

Challenges Faced by MNOs While Monetizing A2P Revenues

1. Protecting the SMS Channel

Vulnerability to Fraud

While SMS is a trusted communication channel, it is susceptible to fraudulent activity. MNOs must implement measures to prevent revenue leakage from messages routed through gray routes and protect end customers from phishing attacks.

Ensuring Secure End-to-End Delivery

MNOs must safeguard their network and customers for secure end-to-end message delivery. This involves implementing strong firewalls and monitoring systems to preserve the trust established over the years.

2. Growing Threat from OTT Players

Competition from OTT Messaging Apps

OTT players like Meta have seized a significant share of the market. MNOs face the risk of losing A2P messaging revenues as these players offer enriched messaging experiences, allowing enterprises to reach their consumers directly.

Conclusion

A2P messaging presents a significant revenue opportunity for MNOs amid declining retail profit margins. However, successful monetization requires addressing key challenges, including securing the SMS channel, countering OTT competition, and educating internal stakeholders.

MNOs must adopt secure A2P messaging services to minimize revenue leakages and transition towards richer communication formats. With the right strategies and technologies, A2P messaging can become a cornerstone of MNOs’ revenue growth and customer engagement efforts.

As an MNO be in total control of your A2P business with secure A2P messaging services from Globe Teleservices, to minimize revenue leakages, helping you make the perfect shift towards richer communication formats.

The Evolution of Firewall: From Legacy Systems to Next-Gen Security

In an industry that prides itself on keeping the world connected digitally, the telecom sector is no stranger to security threats. With the highest number of global DDoS attacks, it has long relied on firewalls as a primary threat aversion mechanism.

Legacy firewalls have been a mainstay for a while

By filtering out suspicious traffic or rogue elements from within their global network through predefined rules, firewalls have safeguarded the telecom sector from several threats. 5G rollout is underway on a big scale globally. As the world prepares for a new dimension of digital complexity, traditional firewalls may not do the job for telecom players anymore.

The challenges of legacy firewalls

They are incapable of supporting modern network complexities. They could also fall short of being able to handle newer operating nuances like cross-protocol integration, security node-based signaling in the place of core network nodes, etc.

However, an even bigger threat lies in the inability of legacy firewalls to counter new-age cyber threats.

The digital world which is growing exponentially is also now one of the major avenues of fraudulent activities and exploitation. From the theft of sensitive customer data to impersonation or identity fraud, the breadth of the threat landscape is immense.

Cybercriminals are even deploying artificial intelligence-driven agents into the digital space to break safeguards and penetrate deeper into enterprise networks. Very often, the entry point they choose to attack is the gateway used by an enterprise to connect with the internet. Suspicious links embedded in SMS text messages can go past legacy firewalls and easily put users at risk.

That’s why traditional firewalls deployed by telecom operators must be equipped with the intelligence or knowledge needed to combat such threat agents.

The shift to new generation firewalls – Why now?

The need to strategically move into the next generation of firewall capabilities is critical given the industry’s role as a key pillar of digital transformation in all sectors. Additionally, here are some of the top reasons why telecom operators must embrace the next generation of firewall technologies to stay competitive:

Rise of cloud

Today, cloud services are used by almost every business irrespective of its size or domain. With the cloud, user authentication becomes a major step of the usage journey. Most businesses rely on traditional methods like SMS-based OTP authentication or call-based authentication to help end-users avail cloud services. However, legacy firewall technologies cannot distinguish between genuine authentication prompts sent by the business and fraudulent signals ingested into the network by criminals.

New age threats

Telecom fraud is a major threat that needs attention. Studies point out that in 2023, telecom fraud has risen by as much as 12%. This translates to billions of dollars in lost revenue.

Similar to SMS frauds, and authentication fraud via missed calls mentioned before, there are a number of diverse network-focused threats in play today. Through fraudulent routing, fraudsters may bypass legacy firewall protection and reach end users with communication scripted as a genuine business message. Other means like bulk malicious SMS traffic may cause legacy firewalls to be jammed and entry into the network automatically provisioned to prevent further congestion. Such threats pose significant risks to telecom operators, compromising network security and yielding negative outcomes.

Growth of IoT

With 5G technology taking off at scale, businesses will look forward to mobilizing their resources around promising technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT). Worldwide spending on IoT is expected to surpass the USD 1 Trillion mark by 2026.

A lot of machine integrations will happen in services traditionally offered by businesses. For example, scenarios like a smart fridge placing replenishment orders to the nearest grocery retailer or an e-commerce service autonomously can become a normal thing soon. There is a catch here. With machine communication over the internet becoming mainstream, it is extremely important to authenticate credentials of control data. Control data could be transmitted in the form of messages, calls, etc. Traditional legacy firewalls are not capable of handling such advanced authentication processes.

The promise of new-generation firewalls

As telecom companies gear up to spearhead digital innovation, they can certainly leverage highly intelligent firewalls like the GTS Armour firewall to guard their progress at all times. Such new-generation firewalls come with a host of features that are much needed in the emerging security and evolving landscape of telecom usage.

One of the striking benefits that telecom companies can leverage from modern firewall solutions is the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning in firewall operations. From threat discovery to neutralization, AI-powered continuous analysis of network traffic by modern firewalls holds great promise. They equip telecom players with the much-needed confidence to partner with other businesses for their digital ambitions.

Platforms like the GTS Armour offer protection against high-end security threats like identity fraud. There is a combination of techniques that firewalls use. Some include robo-calling, interconnect fraud prevention guards, virtual machine fraud detection, etc. Such firewall solutions offer peace of mind for telecom players as they seek to expand their business partnership ecosystem. Through powerful contextual analysis such AI-powered firewall solutions can easily identify and block fraudulent or suspicious text messages way before they are delivered to end users.

Telecom companies are perceived as a foundational element of modern digital experiences. Securing their operations is of primal importance for telecom businesses. Investing in state-of-the-art firewall solutions like Armour helps telecom companies improve their trust credentials in the market with proven security. Get in touch with us to learn more about revamping firewall security in your telecom business with the GTS Armour firewall.

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!

Enabling Innovations – The Purpose That Binds Us

Telecom is one industry that has transformed significantly in the last few years. We have come a long way from fixed landlines and dial-up internet to mobile phones with seamless voice, messaging, and data connectivity.

As a member of this rising sector for years, we are thrilled to witness the many drastic changes transpiring now. We have seen sharply increased, near ubiquitous, connectivity among businesses and individuals, including those based in remote locations. Further, we have had a chance to see how the smaller nations and developing economies have progressed because of communication and information accessibility.

These transformations and first-hand experiences have shaped our ethos and led us to embrace the philosophy of enabling innovations.

What Is ‘Enabling Innovations?’

‘Enabling Innovations’ is a philosophy that our company and affiliates have adopted to codify our DNA as we try to meet customer demands.

We understand that in an ever-changing business landscape, innovation is a key differentiator. It helps enterprises meet and exceed customer needs, often before they become apparent. This enables them to thrive in challenging times, stay ahead of the competition, and increase their revenue.

This bedrock philosophy of ‘enabling innovations’ guides us and our affiliate companies to build products that solve significant problems in finance and telecom.

Take the example of the telecom industry. Fraudulent calls and messaging, SIM box scams, and IP-PBX have resulted in the telecom industry losing $40 billion to fraud alone.

As such, we have built solutions like AI/ML-based anti-fraud voice to safeguard businesses from fraudulent calls and scams. We further provide real-time analytics on messaging traffic and message delivery status to help companies improve connectivity and communication.

We also offer international voice and SMS services for underdeveloped nations to bridge the global connectivity divide and uplift economies. Our solutions provide connectivity to businesses located in remote locations and help them take advantage of new opportunities.

Like Globe Teleservices (GTS), our affiliate companies have also built innovative solutions to solve major global issues.

How Our Affiliates Are Building Innovative Solutions?

CERF

CERF is the enterprise arm of GTS. It has a vast network of 100+ direct carrier connects and provides customer experience, engagement, and security solutions to enterprises worldwide.

GTS TechLabs

GTS TechLabs leverages emerging technologies like AI and data analytics to build solutions that will redefine telecom and fintech industries. Products like Armour X, TxtChain, CPaaS+, and Grentor help MNOs transform and improve efficiency.

Armour X, for example, uses AI/ML capabilities to detect anomalies in traffic patterns. It identifies SIM Farm and IP-PBX frauds, Interconnect fraud, etc. Further, it secures the network from voice and messaging fraud and improves customer experience.

FinBraine

FinBraine offers next-gen lending and eKYC software for telecoms, microfinance institutions, banks, and eCommerce industries. They have built products like IDBRAINE and CREDBRAINE to promote financial inclusivity and provide businesses and individuals with easy access to funds.

How Will Our Customers and Developing Economies Benefit from Our Philosophy?

Although we cater to different clients and industries, each of these affiliates was built to provide innovative solutions.

We have kept innovation at the heart of technologies, methods, and tools built for our clients. It’s the reason why we have been able to empower emerging economies in Africa to deliver everything from healthcare to education. It’s also why we have been able to build products that secure financial systems and provide people access to funds for purchases.

We promise to continue innovating through our ‘enabling innovations’ philosophy. We promise our customers that innovation will be the core of everything GTS and our group of companies develop. It will open new opportunities for businesses to grow and earn revenue. More importantly, it will improve financial inclusion and empower citizens to access funds and purchase whatever they want.

Watch out for this space to know more. We will continue to discuss and promote innovation.

For more information on GTS and our solutions, get in touch.

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.

The Menace of Flash Calls (and How to Stop Them)

Authenticating users to ensure genuineness is a top priority for modern businesses, especially app-based B2C brands. The better they can cater to actual customers, the greater will be their ROI for marketing and service quality initiatives. Traditionally, such businesses relied on SMS-based OTP services to enable this authentication. Today, however, there is a new entrant in the market that is quickly becoming a darling of app-based businesses but a real threat to the revenue streams of telecom companies.

We are talking about flash calls – the missed call-based user authentication service that leverages an MNO’s network to place a call to the device where the business app is installed. Upon receipt of the call, the app terminates the call without answering while authenticating the user in the background. It is estimated that businesses worldwide will be making over 128 billion flash calls yearly by 2026.

When SMSs were used for multi-factor authentication of apps, users had to open the message and enter the OTP, or the app would auto-fetch the OTP from the device. Either way, it resulted in a billable use of the telecom’s network. With flash calls, however, there is not even a need to answer the call, resulting in zero billable transactions on the telecom network.

This has been a huge boon to businesses, especially growing B2C brands that have to constantly authenticate users for safety and other credible reasons. But telcos haven’t been happy about flash calls.

Why Are Flash Calls a Menace for Network Operators?

Despite becoming a darling of businesses, telcos are having a hard time adjusting to the growth of flash calls. Let us explore 3 reasons why telcos consider flash calls a menace:

Loss of Revenue

The ultimate buzz-kill for flash calls is that they do not bring in any revenue for a traditional telecom operator. End users do not answer the authentication calls, and in most cases, they rarely feel the incoming call as the app handles the call quickly in the background. Without actual call connections being realised, there is no way for telecom operators to monetise such calls. While the earlier practice of text message-based OTP systems allowed them to charge businesses for each SMS. This shift to flash calls leads to a significant loss of revenue.

Scams and Spams

As with any new initiative, there are imposters who hop onto the flash call bandwagon to try and dupe people into scams and illegitimate business transactions, thereby making them suffer monetary losses. In most cases, telecom operators have no control over these calls, and there are several flash call service providers who offer cheap and inexpensive facilities that can be used for committing fraud on end-users.
Due to the practice of call-based authentications happening across all popular consumer apps, users will be less suspicious about handling incoming calls from unknown numbers in anticipation of an authentication process. This becomes a key vulnerability for fraudsters to exploit in different ways.

Congestion on Networks

Unlike an SMS-based authentication system, flash calls result in the usage of a significant bandwidth of the carrier’s network spectrum depending on the volume of calls placed. While one or two app businesses using them may not be a big deal, imagine the situation in the future, as explained above, when billions of calls happen over traditional phone networks.

This will result in severe network bandwidth congestion, forcing end-users to experience delayed services, poor network quality, and other significant network hurdles. This can lead to really unpleasant customer experiences. It can further hurt the business prospects of telecom providers if they aren’t able to scale their infrastructure to accommodate the extra space needed for large volumes of flash calls. And they must do all this without even an opportunity to monetise these calls.

How Can Telecom Operators Transform Flash Calls from a Menace into an Opportunity?

Yes, you heard it right! Despite its popularity for being a dampener on revenue, flash calls can become a potential new revenue stream for telecom operators if they can implement the right technology to manage them.

Today, there are AI-enabled flash call management systems that enable telecom providers to seamlessly identify flash call traffic within their network and put controls in place. The AI and machine learning capabilities of such solutions can help in understanding the patterns of potential flash calls and intercept them in the network before they manage to land on an end-user device.

By gating flash calls, telecom operators can demand a fee from businesses to enable the further transfer of the flash call to an end-user device for authentication. This allows them to build a completely new revenue stream that was previously thought to be impossible. Besides, such solutions can also help block spammy and suspicious flash calls and protect users against newer and emerging threats.

As you can see, leveraging the right technology can help transform flash calls from an enemy into a telecom operator’s best friend. But it requires the use of the right solutions from trusted vendors. This is where Globe Tele Services comes into the picture.

Get in touch with us to know more about how our AI-powered flash call management platform is the ideal solution for your telecom business to embrace flash calls without risk.

The Essential Qualities To Look For in a Top-Notch Interconnects Provider

The market for global high-speed interconnects is estimated to reach $39.14 million by the end of 2023, increasing at a CAGR of 9% over the forecast period.

As most in the telecom business know, these interlinks are tangible connections, cables, and interfaces that allow information and data to flow seamlessly within complicated systems. They act as vital linkages between numerous components and devices, allowing communication, data transfer, and messages. Their importance arises from their capacity to maintain continuous connectivity, excellent performance, and dependable operation inside complex systems, as international telecom networks undeniably are.

A poorly constructed structure can cause a variety of problems that will plague your system from start to finish, so you want to make sure you’re picking the best provider out there.

This article discovers what qualities you should look for while selecting an interconnects provider:

The report rates the various solution providers across over 30 KPIs. Over the past decade, Rocco has adopted a market research approach based on:

Cost-Effectiveness

The best way of assessing the cost-effectiveness of your provider is to examine their value proposition. Consider the track record of the solutions, the warranty terms, and any additional services or support offered. Even though the cost may be slightly greater, a top-tier provider will offer interconnects that deliver long-term value and deep reliability.

While the overall cost is crucial, it is also critical to guarantee that the connections facilitated fulfil the requisite quality, dependability, and durability standards. When analysing overall cost efficiency, consider the total cost of ownership, which includes considerations such as upkeep, alternate options, and downtime support. For example, at Globe Teleservices, we provide our customers with premium assistance in making economical international calls without sacrificing call quality and overall performance.

Experience, Specialization, and Global Presence

Choosing a top-tier interconnects provider should include taking into account their years of industry experience. A long-standing presence illustrates a provider’s capacity to adapt to new technology and industry demands. It demonstrates their ability to overcome obstacles, build expertise, and sustain their firm over time.

Also, be sure to examine their track record by looking through case studies or success stories that demonstrate their experience in the industry. Next, look for a company that specialises in connectivity solutions for the telecom industry. This specialization demonstrates their in-depth knowledge in connecting technology and, therefore, the likelihood that they will be able to offer an effective solution.

Of course, consider whether they have a presence in international markets, such as Africa, Asia, Europe, and America, alongside their interconnects with global telecom providers. Overall, choose providers that have been at it for a while, as this means they have learned how to overcome the difficulties of this industry.

For this, look for client testimonials, reviews, or references to determine how they are regarded for customer satisfaction. Positive feedback demonstrates their dedication to quality and customer service.

Emphasis on Security

It is critical to evaluate the adherence to quality standards when selecting a top-tier telecom company. They must reflect their dedication to sustaining high-quality communication and standards across their whole operation.

Of course, different industries have their own set of criteria and regulations that interconnects must follow. The provider should show full awareness of these needs, as well as a track record of satisfying industry-specific standards.

When evaluating the quality of their services, be sure to ask these questions:

Do they ensure low latency for voice calls for better call quality?
What’s their approach to ensure the best high-quality international routes?
Do their solutions facilitate live quality assurance?

When it comes to the concept of “quality”, the company should ensure uninterrupted high-quality communication.

Support

They should be knowledgeable about the products they provide to be able to provide expert guidance and assistance. Whether it’s helping with product selection, troubleshooting problems, or making recommendations, the provider’s technical professionals should be accessible and dependable resources.

In concrete terms, evaluate the provider based on these questions:

Do they provide 24/7 NOC support?
How easily reachable are they?
What’s their response time for support requests?
Do they provide any aid for diagnostic and troubleshooting?
Do their support staff provide product training?
What level of technical support is facilitated?

Wrapping Up

The best service providers should not only offer top-notch solutions, but should also have a presence in international markets, adhere to security standards, provide 24/7 support, and ensure quality communication.

At Globe Teleservices, we provide our customers with the best-derived rates and help them enhance international voice communications. Learn more about our smart voice solutions here.

The Digital Transformation of Customer Experiences Must Start with Onboarding

Every interaction with the customer is an opportunity to create a positive impression. As businesses work hard to keep up with customer expectations, they are re-evaluating ways to elevate customer experiences with the most appropriate technology applications.

Customer behaviors have also evolved dramatically in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and have compelled industries to accelerate digital transformation initiatives. This digitization drive is compelling telecom operators to identify new revenue streams as plummeting revenues from voice and competition from OTT services have made the playfield more complex.

Telecom providers now have to provide value-added services in addition to their portfolio of offerings, enable mobile money, and integrate digital payments into the telecom ecosystem.

Challenges with Customer Onboarding

Today customer experience revolves around seamless integration and is driven by convenience. As such, the customer onboarding process is crucial, for it elevates the first step of the journey around any product lifecycle.

Customer onboarding is a very sensitive journey that customers embark on with businesses. A closer look at most customer onboarding journeys reveals the deficiencies of human touchpoints. Human touchpoints are the interfaces at which information is shared by the customer and the organization or business.

Customers don’t want to enter their information manually through these touchpoints and want seamless automation. The data is usually readily available and can be extracted from documents or found in-house and on external systems.

The latency between touchpoints, complex and demanding analogue interactions, and communications being delivered in formats which are not mobile-enabled impede customer experiences and increase frustration. Identifying ways to digitally transform the customer onboarding process emerges as a strategic priority to enhance the overall user experience.

Digital Transformation of the Onboarding Process is Imminent

As the competitive landscape becomes more challenging, telcos must look toward packing in as much value as possible into critical business operations such as the onboarding process. They need to mitigate the vulnerabilities of human touchpoints and ensure that customer journeys shift towards positive outcomes.

Digital onboarding is now an immediate priority for any business across any sector. Onboarding is described as the phase in which the customer gets started on using a product or service. All the processes that need to get the customer started to fall under the umbrella of onboarding.

Digitising onboarding demands the execution of these processes with the least manual intervention and ensures that customer onboarding and identity verification are simple, and intuitive, and don’t compromise on security.

Moving to digital onboarding is also becoming essential for telcos because of the increasing regulatory landscape and compliance demands. Staying compliant can add to overall costs but not staying compliant can cost a business more long-term.

With the compliance and regulatory landscape becoming strict and complex, there arises a demand for the increased accuracy of data processing. Maintaining data transparency has never been more critical than today. Elevating customer experiences need data, and expecting a customer to re-enter data or use a slow, manual process is what leads to customer frustration.

Digitization ensures that data is recorded, stored, and can be accessed at any time for designing personalised customer experiences.

Digital transformation of the customer experience also starts with onboarding because nothing causes more grievance to the customer than processing data that they know is already available somewhere. That apart, ensuring the integrity and security of the data is of critical importance not only to gain customer trust but also to remain on the right side of regulatory authorities.

How Digital Onboarding Drives Customer Experience

Digital onboarding uses an array of technologies to supercharge the entire customer acquisition process and ensure that they are engaged and happy with interactive experiences. Here’s how digital onboarding works:

Instant document validation and verification using machine learning and automated verification and identification technologies.
Simplified data entry and validation using OCR-based automated data extraction from documents. This also makes the process faster, more accurate and time-efficient.
Greater data accuracy and security using mobile apps. Apps request mandatory permissions necessary for the KYC process and also enable OTP-based validation.
Prevent impersonation fraud and make online onboarding more secure by leveraging machine learning-based face match validation and liveness detection.
Deliver country-specific identity document integration.
Deliver a higher degree of security and privacy protection using comprehensive security controls while facilitating fast authentication.
Make digital identity verification and onboarding convenient and secure by employing technologies such as AI, image analytics, and powerful automation.
Launch mobile money and financial services offerings with confidence while accounting for the regulatory demands of both the telecom and finance sectors.

Conclusion

Today’s customers are well versed with digital interactions and are clear in what they want from them. Seamless, simple, intuitive experiences contribute toward elevated customer experiences. The inability to do so causes customers to switch to competitors in no time.

Since first impressions are often last impressions, digitally driven onboarding processes help influence the customers positively and drive organisations on the path to profitability. Let us help you in your quest to boost customer engagement and loyalty by starting with customer onboarding.

What Does it Take to Build Cutting-Edge Telecom Products

Over the past few years, the telecom sector has come under increased pressure as traditional value pools fail to contribute to growth. While this sector has constantly been working towards building greater connections, it must now focus more on delivering digital-native (Uber and Netflix-like) experiences and redefining interaction models.

The rate at which telecom suppliers need to roll out products has increased dramatically as we step into the age of customer-backed disruption. The market for next-gen services is also growing, and business rules are changing – telecommunication has to do more than connect calls.

The pandemic further upended the world of telecom and brought about further disruption in this sector as customers wanted self-service, omnichannel interactions, and instant communication, with solutions offering them greater levels of personalisation and security.

Along those lines, realigning business strategies to accommodate market and customer demands has compelled telcos to operate like digital service providers. Some of the common challenges facing telcos today can be listed as:

Delivering quick and personalised, omnichannel customer service.
Navigating complex operational processes to accelerate the pace of service delivery.
Ensuring network security with the right technical, network, and operational upgrades.
Identifying revenue leaks through grey routes and improving the security posture
Driving elevated customer experience that mimics digital platform experiences like those offered by messaging services like WhatsApp.
Navigating the complex regulatory and compliance, and security landscape with ease.

Telecom products have to get a complete facelift now as broadband markets get more competitive and enterprise markets for private cellular networks and edge computing gain momentum.

The industry has embraced new networks, services, and applications such as 5G, distributed computing, and as artificial intelligence. These are driving enterprise interest in multi-access edge computing and private cellular networks.

Given the accelerating pace of change and disruption, telcos are identifying ways to fulfil the demand for ever-increasing communication speed, security concerns, and more interconnectedness.

Indeed, with constant and dynamic market shifts, telcos need dynamic and cutting-edge telecom products to help drive competitive differentiation and stay ahead of the curve. But what does it take to build these cutting-edge telecom products? Let’s explore.

Technical Depth

Building next-gen telecom products entail exploring the depth of technology and sustaining exhaustive technical knowledge. This involves being technology agnostic and using the best technology for the function rather than chasing the latest and shiniest new technology on the block.

Depth of technology also ensures the creative use of technology and the capacity to engage it to do more. AI and Machine Learning, for example, are technologies that are best suited to improve the security posture of telcos. Developing robust security products using these technologies helps telcos recognise and protect operators from all known types of voice fraud.

These technologies further provide complete 360-degree network protection for SMS traffic and give mobile operators and end-users a safe and secure messaging environment.

Innovation Focus

Having an unwavering focus on driving future-ready innovation is also essential to developing telecom products today. As the pace of technology change accelerates, telcos need to access products that can help them meet the needs of the present and also scale and meet the needs of the future.

Making the right technology considerations and using the right technologies and frameworks becomes a crucial contributor to these capabilities. Besides that, they have to know how the industry, market trends, customer demands, and technology competencies will evolve to ensure the longevity of these products.

A Comprehensive and Customisable Suite of Solutions

Technology products that can be leveraged as a comprehensive suite of solutions stand to gain an additional advantage. A stack telco operation and enterprise commercial communication services suite will consider all aspects that start from fraud management, regulatory compliance, and business intelligence and extend to customer engagement.

A full stack suite drives greater interconnectedness and elevates customer interactions. These products, however, should be completely configurable and meet the evolving needs of the business.

As such, these products need to be powerful, scalable, and flexible all-in-one business solutions and must blend quality with productivity. Well-designed, unified communication platforms also become crucial to this mix and drive meaningful customer interactions. They facilitate seamless and superior customer experiences across multiple channels.

Domain Knowledge

Profound domain knowledge of developing cutting-edge telecom products is non-negotiable to building products fit for today’s market. Understanding consumer needs and customer behaviours, the way customers want to engage with the product, comprehensiveness of solutions, security considerations and frameworks etc., are some factors that get organically covered with domain expertise.

While any software development company can build a telecom product, a development company that specialises in building telecom products will have greater experience.

They can identify all possible loopholes that impede product experience and find the best ways to secure the security perimeter. They can also discover ways to enhance customer experiences by driving omnichannel customer engagement to make conversations relevant and contextual while reaching them on their preferred channel for a richer experience.

Years of experience in telecom solution deliveries, market expertise, and implementation experience are factors to consider. Deep roots in voice, messaging, and data services with attention to regulatory compliance and security vulnerabilities are critical capabilities that further contribute to developing cutting-edge, robust, and secure telecom products.

The Bottom Line

International experience in developing trusted telecom products and solutions and efficient service delivery expertise skills to look for to ensure that products are comprehensive, capable, and well-suited to meet the evolving needs of modern telecom providers. Connect with us to know how we can help.