How Do I Invest In The Telecommunications Industry? – The battle for customers in the telecom industry has never been fiercer. As the voice and messaging business shrinks, and top media services such as Skype, Facebook, Netflix, Amazon retire their flagship offerings, telecommunications companies must prioritize investment in customer engagement strategies.
Customer experience is the number one area where telecom companies need to differentiate themselves from their digital competitors, as according to the latest Ericsson survey data, most companies cannot claim to have high customer engagement metrics:
How Do I Invest In The Telecommunications Industry?
All of this is the opposite of what you might call a good customer experience, which is a way of doing business that leaves nothing to chance and ensures that all interactions with the company reflect who the customer is.
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The telecom industry needs to take targeted actions to increase customer engagement. This means moving from “tinkering” efforts to a customer engagement strategy entirely supported by changes in operations, technology and human resources.
Customer engagement is the process of optimizing the quality of your customer’s interaction with your business at every point of contact (research, pre-sales, onboarding, usage, support, etc.).
Unfortunately, many telecom operators invest heavily in optimizing all stages of the customer management cycle, right up to purchase. After contracts are signed and services purchased, some businesses actively measure customer engagement or invest in improving it.
On the other hand, the lack of proper customer engagement solutions makes established providers more vulnerable to disruptive competitors – OTT players and digital-first market participants are better equipped to engage with customers across multiple touch points.
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As such, the future of the telecom industry depends heavily on the ability of traditional players to bring their customer engagement approach to a new level of digital maturity.
Telecom providers that actively measure customer engagement and invest in further improvements have a strong return on investment:
While programmatic implementation in sales, marketing and customer support operations is critical to improving customer experience and engagement, all initiatives will fail unless supported by appropriate technology solutions.
In this article, we explain how you can improve the customer experience in the telecommunications industry by investing in five areas of technology.
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Like banking, today’s telecom customers prefer to complete their digital onboarding remotely. The global pandemic has accelerated this trend. As OTT operators offer one-click service subscriptions, transparent billing plans and fast connectivity, there is an urgent need for traditional telcos to raise the bar for triple-play and quad-play digital sales.
For some telcos, the above customer journey may seem futuristic. But the same operating plan has helped new entrants to enter the market since January 2012. That’s when the French telecommunications company Free Mobile entered the local market with the network’s first triple-play business model. Committed to selling 100% online from day one, the company offers a very competitive subscription offer – unlimited voice calls, text messages, data and no roaming charges for €19.99 before tax. In less than four years, Free Mobile has amassed 11 million subscribers and generates 40 percent of the revenue for its parent company, Iliad.
A 2019 Bain & Company study also determined that telecommunications companies that use a simplified and digital approach to their products and processes outperform their peers in terms of customer loyalty and financial growth.
While your company is not ready for a full digital transformation, you should consider offering at least some telecom applications to handle specific customer and business processes:
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According to a 2019 McKinsey survey, companies with a large number of digital products score higher customer satisfaction. In addition, the company can also reduce the service cost per customer by 20%-40%.
While telephone support calls remain the preferred method of contact for 79% of consumers, some e-care solutions are also gaining traction:
That’s why you need to digitize your support operations. Case in point: British virtual network operator Giffgaff has become a leader in e-care for the telecommunications industry. The entire customer support staff is only 33 employees and 50% of customer inquiries are resolved within 3 minutes. the secret? Self-help library and extensive community supported by mobile app engagement rewards program. GiffGaff rewards active community participants with special points that can be redeemed for airtime credits, cash or donated to a chosen charity.
T-Mobile NL has taken a similar approach, launching a self-service portal to facilitate peer-to-peer customer support. In this large community of 400,000 members, 65% of questions are answered by other customers. This, in this way, saves about $4 million in operating costs.
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85% of countries require the collection of personal information of SIM users, which results in a lot of paperwork during the onboarding process. Fully digital KYC is one of the latest trends in the telecom industry to simplify an important part of the onboarding process.
Instead of being asked to submit an ID, new customers can go directly to the app to select a service plan, click on the required ID image for verification, add payment details and track SIM delivery. All data is automatically encrypted and securely transferred to your central database. The integration of KYC applications with customer support applications also reduces the complexity of verifying each lead before providing personal assistance.
Sales assistance apps give your team instant access to the right tools and information to facilitate your personal sales process. The application can combine two specific functional areas:
Disaster management applications can reduce the burden on contact centers during outages. They can help you break down and prioritize different customer issues and direct your agents to the most important issues. Alternatively, customers with less severe problems may be redirected to a self-help section or community portal that explains:
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As you continue to identify your next digital candidate, consider running a customer service gap analysis using the SERVQUAL (Service Quality Gap) model.
This way, you can launch a product that provides the services that your customers want.
The telco situation is interesting. On the one hand, they already have a lot of customer data in the system. On the other hand, most players still struggle to take this data and turn it into useful insights.
Predictive analytics in the telecom industry is still in its infancy. However, early pilots have shown that these investments can yield significant returns, particularly in terms of customer engagement and profitability. Consider just the following use cases:
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With the help of predictive analytics tools, telecom companies can transform customer data (both structured and unstructured) into rich customer profiles:
Integrating this data into your data lake and supplementing it with external insights can help your company tailor its approach to each customer and re-adjust your offering to meet their needs.
SAS has partnered with Rogers, Canada’s leading mobile communications network, to develop a new predictive data analysis solution. A new algorithm can predict whether some customers are more likely to recommend or dislike a company’s services than others. New Insights Drive Significant Performance Improvements for Rogers Sales Team.
In addition, using the collected data, the company tweaks voice call scripts to solve customer problems and provide personalized support through social media networks. As a result, Rogers reduced customer complaints by 53%.
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Other telecommunications companies are deploying predictive analytics applications for their contact centers. The new algorithm predicts the top three caller categories for about 80 percent of all calls. By receiving these “alerts”, the time it takes experts to solve problems has been reduced by 15%.
The current state of deep learning allows businesses to make highly accurate predictions. These algorithms can be used to predict potential “churn” rates, identify potential risks, and alert teams to take immediate action.
McKinsey estimates that telecommunications companies that can quickly identify and respond to changes in customer needs and behavior (with the help of advanced analytics) can secure 30% to 50% cash flow.
With the right data and algorithms, your company can accurately estimate the ROI of various marketing campaigns and measure customer response to different types of advertising. Linear regression models can be used to analyze the impact of various marketing campaigns on sales figures and simulate various scenarios before execution. This way, you can identify and prioritize your marketing spend across channels, providing better ROI and reducing overall budget waste.
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Lack of immediate customer service leads to slower business and reduced profits. Unfortunately, the telco is silent on the matter. If you want to strengthen your brand, you need to create new mechanisms to connect with your customers online. Sentiment analysis allows you to automatically capture and slice all customer interactions that happen on social media and discover new levers that can have a significant impact on your business.
By using customer impact analysis and measurement models, you can better control brand sentiment. In this case, your team can predict how proposed changes, such as data plans, will change consumer attitudes and behaviors.