Take control of customer experience and enhancing CX in telecom
Developing technologies for better CX
First, we should talk about technologies. Typically, the major technological brands — Apple, Netflix, etc. — come to one’s mind when it comes to enhanced CX. To narrow the gap between those brands and an ordinary communications service provider, the latter can take all advantages of emerging cloud-based technologies, on-device machine learning, artificial intelligence, APIs and omni channels, and finally become a leader in CX. It is already the case that telecom operators have all the technical capabilities to significantly enhance CX.
A massive amount of user data turns into an important strategic asset of telecom operators. They can analyze and process every CDR, EDR and CRM record so that to improve the quality of service and make a personalized offer. Specifically, the BRE solution by Bercut enables a telecom operator to create individual offers by processing events that occur in the system as a result of subscribers’ actions. This contributes to even more personalized service provisioning. Besides, the solution allows obtaining high-level review of common problems that may arise with subscriber servicing.
There are more communications channels presently available for telecom operators than in any other business area. So, they can become leaders in CX. On the other hand, they may encounter some difficulties due to an internal inconsistency of various channels of interaction with a customer. As CSG reports, 40% of companies identify such an inconsistency as the major problem in providing a quality service to a customer. To solve the problem, one may integrate different channels into a unified process or interaction with a customer. This allows preventing loss of interaction context when switching to another channel.
According to the Omdia research, telecom operators consider the following 3 main investment trends in СХ over the next 1.5 years:
- Online customer interaction platform (43%).
- Tools for customer relations specialists (43%).
- Artificial intelligence and business analytics (29%).
As the Gartner research shows, money will be mainly invested in artificial intelligence, CRM, IoT and tools for analyzing customer needs.
Researchers have noted that the deployment of 5G networks will lead to a dramatic increase in the number of projects for personalized multichannel interaction with В2С and В2В customers. So, the explosive growth of digital assistants and chat bots is expected in the upcoming 1.5 years. As Analysys Mason forecasts, telecom operators’ expenses on assistants will rise by 42% yearly until 2022.
Improving internal business processes
As for the next component of CX management, the Gartner experts believe that the key to success resides in the following areas:
- Customer experience (CX).
- Multichannel experience (MX).
- User experience (UX).
- Employee experience (EX).
Belousova says: Bercut develops products and solutions taking into account current trends, usability of internal processes and demands of end users. To help operators with enhancing CX, the Bercut product portfolio includes the Business Rules Engine (BRE) solution. The main purpose of BRE is to increase LTV and support the telecom operator’s marketing strategy. BRE features tools for customer offer personalization and allows the user to flexibly adjust a multi-factor model of rules and event management. The solution enables creating unique business products based on events that occur with the subscriber, and on the rules that take effect when a specific event occurs. These can be traveling and roaming, generating promocodes for service providers within a loyalty program of a telecom operator, offering better family tariffs with group discounts or special tariffs and gifts for smartphones purchased in the operator’s market place. The solution provides an unlimited range of opportunities to create new products. This supports an intelligent chat bot for multi-channel interaction with a subscriber, a user-friendly interface for employees, and more. Many research agencies cite anonymized examples of the impact of CX enhancement on a company's financial performance, largely related to reducing customer churn. Forrester reports that according to the results of a survey of 15 industries, the enhanced CX has a significant effect on revenue growth and other business indicators. There is a clear trend toward building vast ecosystems designed to compete for users — often in multiple markets at once — and accumulate huge amount of user data. The race to enhance their own CX in the coming years is inevitable. That is why all the technology companies must consider this challenge when building their products.
