Tech partnerships: Digitizing customer experience in telecom

Telecommunications companies are facing some of the toughest times they have had in decades. Increased regulatory pressures, changing consumer habits, and ageing technical infrastructure are taking their toll. By partnering with the right development partner, telecom corporations can gain a competitive edge.

Telecommunications organizations need to create the ability to overcome disruption, make up for retail losses, adapt to new consumer behaviour, and build for the future.

Building for the future of telecom requires customer-centric strategy (personalization), product development (bundling of goods and services), operational improvements (automation and artificial intelligence).

A partnership with the right development agency, with experience and expertise that understands the telecommunications industry, its regulations and ecosystem will help ease the pains of disconnected systems and create an improved user experience, for customers and employees alike.

What the right tech partner knows about telecom

Siloed departments detract from the customer experience

“68 percent of CSPs identify “siloed processes and divisions” as a key obstacle to implementing customer experience initiatives.” - IBM, Outhinking Disruption in Communications

So, what do “siloed processes and divisions” look like to the customer experience? When dealer networks, customer call centers and ecommerce properties cannot effectively communicate with each other, seamlessly, it results in a disjointed experience for the customer. It also keeps business teams from getting a complete end-to-end view of the customer journey.

To improve the customer experience, communications providers need to look at all of their processes through the customer’s eyes. By using big data, analytics and cognitive computing solutions, telecoms can uncover deeper customer insights and consistently engage customers across available channels. With those insights, creating the optimal user journey and determining what changes are necessary to operations, technical architecture and reporting structures become easier to roadmap. Consulting with a digital agency that has been through this process will also make the journey easier.

Digital-first buying is here to stay, but customers aren’t

“Telecommunications providers are challenged to meet the increasingly high expectations of empowered—and sometimes less loyal—subscribers.”- IBM, The future of telecom and the evolving role of service providers

Everyone knows this by now: consumer buying behaviour changed with COVID-19. Worldwide lockdowns, isolation and “flattening the curve” meant that for people to get what they wanted, they needed to switch to purchasing most goods and services online, from the comfort and safety of their home.

That shift in buying behaviour meant that customer experience needed to change almost overnight. Telecoms have to adapt operations to become digital-first, serving the client online for the majority of their buying journey, with call centers and retail storefront locations being used to fix the problems that could not be solved online.

In the graphic below, IBM Institute for Business Value illustrates how the digital-first omnichannel strategy evolved in 2020.

Partner priority: Digitizing the customer experience

“Develop strategies that enable speed and agility to create new partnerships and solutions.” - IBM, The future of telecom and the evolving role of service providers

Telecom companies working for future growth need to ensure they understand the desired customer experience and then prioritize the digitization of that experience.

Digitization of customer service and client support includes creating self-service sales and support functions through online properties and dealer network portals. Operational digitization means re-engineering processes and improving end-to-end automation. Using design thinking approaches, new tooling and application programming interfaces (API) calls, telecoms can improve backend operations that will have a cascade effect on the overall user experience, not only for customers but employees and partners as well.

Building a strong tech partner relationship with the right development agency makes digitizing the customer experience possible and makes it profitable, scalable, and efficient.

Partnering with Acro Commerce

With a deep understanding of the pains and competitive pressures that our telecommunication partners face inside and outside of their organizations, Acro Commerce has developed a proven strategic development process that increases speed to market, resulting in increased product margins, sales volumes and overall market share.

Let us customize that process around your business needs and show you how this proven method will get your solution to market, fast.