Data empowerment key to customer experience in telecoms

Across Europe, tele­coms providers are look­ing to unleash the pow­er of their data. At no point in his­to­ry has so much infor­ma­tion been gen­er­at­ed; smart­phone habits, media con­sump­tion, cus­tomer ser­vice calls, online behave and inter­ac­tion is all being col­lect­ed. It’s a gold­mine for tel­cos able to act on it — and they increas­ing­ly realise its poten­tial.

How­ev­er, data pro­tec­tion and pri­va­cy issues are still loom­ing large with the likes of the EU’s GDPR leg­is­la­tion hold­ing sway. This sets clear bound­aries for tele­com play­ers in Europe. Yet, when the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence is such a fierce­ly con­test­ed bat­tle­ground and with so much more data being col­lat­ed, it rais­es new ques­tions.  

“Data is gold, but it’s not our gold, it’s the cus­tomer’s gold. So, we need to earn it via trust and do some­thing use­ful with it,” says Urs Rein­hard, chief dig­i­tal and cus­tomer offi­cer at UPC in Switzer­land.

Trust is a key theme in terms of what data is col­lect­ed, what tele­coms providers do with it and how it trans­lates into the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. Aside from banks, tele­coms providers prob­a­bly have more data points on cus­tomers than any oth­er indus­try. They are in a priv­i­leged posi­tion.

The aim is to be able to offer cus­tomers more per­son­alised, intel­li­gent and proac­tive ser­vices, with­out being intru­sive or invad­ing people’s sense of pri­va­cy, but achiev­ing this is a very fine bal­ance. “Some inter­ac­tions are per­ceived as valu­able; oth­ers are seen as creepy. There is a debate in the sec­tor in terms of set­ting the right rules, the need to cre­ate trans­paren­cy, as well as how to nav­i­gate those bound­aries at the moment,” says Dirk Grote, senior direc­tor, indus­try advi­so­ry, com­mu­ni­ca­tions for EMEA at Sales­force.

At the same time, cus­tomer expec­ta­tions are sky­rock­et­ing. Data-enabled lead­ers such as Net­flix or Ama­zon have set the bar high in terms of cus­tomer ser­vice, inter­ac­tion and use­ful­ness. This influ­ences the expec­ta­tions in oth­er sec­tors of the econ­o­my, includ­ing tele­coms. 

“These busi­ness­es are not typ­i­cal­ly com­peti­tors for tele­com providers. How­ev­er, they have set con­sumer expec­ta­tions for good, rel­e­vant dig­i­tal expe­ri­ences. If con­sumers have high expec­ta­tions that are not met on a tel­co site, it leaves peo­ple feel­ing dis­ap­point­ed. This is bad for churn rate, cross-sell­ing and upselling,” adds Sami Helin, sales direc­tor for EMEA at Cov­eo.

Time for a more proactive experience

Most improve­ments in cus­tomer expe­ri­ence for tel­cos are incre­men­tal gains, includ­ing slight­ly bet­ter ser­vices, faster reac­tions to prob­lems or more per­son­alised rec­om­men­da­tions. This comes as providers get bet­ter at map­ping cus­tomer jour­neys, join­ing the dots on bun­dled ser­vices or shar­ing data between oper­a­tions and cus­tomer ser­vice teams.

How­ev­er, anoth­er bat­tle­ground for providers involv­ing the use of data, requires com­pa­nies to pre-empt issues such as out­ages, prob­lems with phone lines, repairs or con­fig­ur­ing home wifi. A more proac­tive approach is need­ed to meet these chal­lenges. This involves inform­ing cus­tomers before an inci­dent hap­pens, send­ing out tools so they can self-diag­nose prob­lems or pre­vent­ing inci­dents in the first place.

If a cus­tomer has to call a ser­vice cen­tre, this costs mon­ey and eats into the bot­tom line. The less cus­tomer ser­vice time some­one needs for solv­ing prob­lems the more rev­enue providers make — more than on upselling incre­men­tal ser­vices. Avoid­ing half of the tele­phone calls that providers get a year and half of the inter­ven­tions could see hun­dreds of mil­lions of euros saved. This is worth invest­ment from providers.

“The key here is to pre­vent the need for cus­tomer inter­ac­tions, this is a cru­cial thing to achieve. The idea that you don’t need to call me, or you don’t need to try to find a solu­tion by your­self because I know before you know that you’re going to expe­ri­ence some­thing, and I can tell you how to solve it before you have to expe­ri­ence it. With data and tech­nol­o­gy today this is total­ly fea­si­ble,” says Jean-Pas­cal van Over­beke, chief con­sumer mar­ket at KPN in the Nether­lands.

Van Over­beke adds: “I think the indus­try can do a lot bet­ter and a lot more. I think that it’s not extreme­ly com­pli­cat­ed. But we need to add val­ue to the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence.”

Tele­com providers across Europe are look­ing into extend­ing their ser­vices whether it is act­ing as a media plat­form, offer­ing telemed­i­cine, smart-home solu­tions, home secu­ri­ty, even elec­tric vehi­cle charg­ing. At the heart of this cus­tomer expe­ri­ence expan­sion is data and know­ing what the cus­tomer real­ly wants and when they need it.

“Every­thing we do in the future is about cus­tomer data. As tele­com providers we need to get much bet­ter at under­stand­ing the data space, break­ing down silos, pro­mot­ing data cul­tures so we have an end-to-end view of the cus­tomer. This is vital,” says Rein­hard.

Cus­tomers are not always will­ing to pay high­er prices for tele­coms ser­vices, it is treat­ed increas­ing­ly like a util­i­ty, the mar­ket is there­fore fierce­ly com­pet­i­tive in many nations across Europe. Invest­ments need­ed for new ser­vices can also be high. This is where time-to-mar­ket for new prod­ucts mat­ters, where first-mover advan­tage is crit­i­cal.

“As we get more data, and we can gain more insights from it by lever­ag­ing arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence and machine learn­ing, this allows us to be able to deploy new prod­ucts faster, react to cus­tomer needs more quick­ly with a focus on improv­ing the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, and get­ting new ser­vices into the mar­ket at speed,” says Dr. Mari­am Kay­nia, vice pres­i­dent and direc­tor of archi­tec­ture, strat­e­gy and ana­lyt­ics for Tele­fon­i­ca Ger­many.

“There is anoth­er oppor­tu­ni­ty with data and that is reduc­ing the cost of own­er­ship. In order to be able to make the right trade-off deci­sions on where to deploy the next net­work upgrade or where to deploy the next euro invest­ment to get the high­est val­ue back or how to auto­mate our net­work deploy­ment and oper­a­tions. You need a lot of data con­nect­ed end-to-end across all of your sys­tems and con­tain­ing all types of infor­ma­tion, in order to make bet­ter data-dri­ven deci­sions.” 

Data needs to be treat­ed like any oth­er crit­i­cal asset. It must have pri­or­i­ty at the top of the com­pa­ny, at the board­room lev­el. It is now about the c‑suite, as well as all depart­ments, under­stand­ing the ‘art of the pos­si­ble’ with data. The busi­ness case for action­able data is there­fore increas­ing­ly pal­pa­ble.

Omnichannel issues

Data in the tele­coms space is not restrict­ed to one chan­nel. Providers are now inter­act­ing with cus­tomers and col­lect­ing infor­ma­tion in an omni-chan­nel envi­ron­ment via chat­bots, smart­phone tex­ting, web­pages and audio calls. Join­ing the dots and being proac­tive with cus­tomer ser­vice can be an issue.

“How do you trans­late the fact that you see your cus­tomer going three times to the same web­page to try and solve a prob­lem and yet using this infor­ma­tion proac­tive­ly can be an issue? Yes, I know, the cus­tomer is going to call me, you know some­thing is going to have to be done to resolve this prob­lem. But how do you use that data and be proac­tive with­out invad­ing the customer’s pri­va­cy? This is still some­thing that needs to be man­aged. The pre­dic­tive part is some­thing we are focus­ing on,” says Van Over­beke.

Fur­ther invest­ments by tele­coms providers to pro­vide even bet­ter cus­tomer expe­ri­ences that are more per­son­alised, intel­li­gent, intu­itive, gen­uine and proac­tive should be expect­ed. As should expe­ri­ences that are more data-dri­ven, with greater use of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence and machine learn­ing.

“What will hap­pen in par­al­lel is a debate in soci­ety. Where is the line that we want to walk as a soci­ety? What is accept­able and what is not accept­able? And how do we bal­ance the ben­e­fits and the trade­offs? And I would say there is a ques­tion over society’s con­tract with this, in terms of what we are will­ing to accept,” says Grote.

This is where trust comes in and how tele­com play­ers can cre­ate a bet­ter atmos­phere of trust. This has to be earned; rep­u­ta­tion is vital in this space. An excel­lent cus­tomer expe­ri­ence also breeds trust, and the best expe­ri­ences are sup­port­ed by sim­pli­fied, straight­for­ward ser­vices that win over hearts and minds. “Giv­ing back the con­trol to the cus­tomer so they are in con­trol of the expe­ri­ence is cru­cial. Once we have done that and the cus­tomer feels that we are gen­uine in giv­ing them con­trol, it will enable us to not only improve the expe­ri­ence, but to start to add fur­ther lay­ers of new ser­vices,” says Van Over­beke.

“More cus­tomers have the desire to be in con­trol not only in terms of what data they share or don’t want to share, but also know when the expe­ri­ence hap­pens. For instance, I want to be able to do it at night, at the week­end, when­ev­er, I don’t want to be con­strained by open­ing times. Any inter­ac­tion with a brand needs to be 24–7, instan­ta­neous and it has to work all the time.”

To find out more please vis­it coveo.com and salesforce.com.