Like it or not, the Telco CX Bar is Just Higher
The rapid evolution of device technology and the advent of 5G and superfast broadband have become something of a double-edged sword. Customer demand for faster speed forces telcos to invest in the infrastructure to support it; however, in a commodified and highly competitive market this has not always translated to higher profitability.
Furthermore, the economy and inflationary pressure over the last couple of years have made customers very price-sensitive at a time when it has never been easier to switch telco providers.
Simultaneously, there is increased competition on the network, enterprise, and consumer side from new players such as Starlink and smaller-scale altnets that don’t rely on the Openreach network and associated infrastructure costs.
All this forces telcos to explore other routes to profit – partnerships, diversification into devices and services, etc., recognising that connectivity alone cannot drive increased revenue. Some examples include:
- EE’s platform strategy – selling a huge range of tech and services
- VMO2 focussing on its converged Volt offering and on loyalty with Priority Moments
- Over the Top (OTT) streaming services such as Netflix, Spotify, and Amazon Prime becoming available via any telco
- Partnering with competitors such as EE offering Sky Stream
- The Three/Vodafone networks merger
Deeper customer engagement is key – happy customers buying multiple products and services tend not to churn.
With such rapid evolution in the telco industry, it has never been more critical to understand customers. They expect to be recognised and to have relevant offers and communications at every touchpoint. And with telcos also owning the means of communication, customers frankly just expect telcos to be even better at CX.
That excellent CX is impossible without excellent customer intelligence (CI), and that means the CI data must be both easily available and actionable. All telcos have highly evolved and often complex tech stacks to support operational, advertising, and marketing activity, and this makes leveraging value from data difficult
The answer is not simply more tech. Moving beyond often siloed and hard-to-scale data lakes and lake houses to a more decentralised data mesh approach can be cost-effective. This allows telcos to focus on creating a unified data layer that works with the existing stack rather than constantly bolting on more software development kits.
This doesn’t only apply to customer data and insight. The network data needs to be democratised too – not just for planning future investment but potentially for customising CX. Examples would be recognising outages or anticipating surges in demand and channelling service and customer communications accordingly.
Flexible and creative approaches to both the customer experience and the use of customer data will enable telcos to innovate services and drive new revenue streams as media owners in their own right. Surely the telco media network can’t be far away? Improved augmented and virtual reality technology coupled with faster connectivity will transform how people view media, communicate, and how they game – offering personalised real time offers.
For telcos to transform it’s all about the data – harness it effectively and they can move beyond connectivity.
