Telecommunication

The telecom industry is experiencing rapid growth as well as significant upheaval. Communication Service Providers (CSPs) are evolving from merely providing communication and data services to becoming critical business partners, co-innovating with their customers, and offering an increasing number of value-added services such as multi-cloud, the Internet of Things (IoT), 5G, mission-critical applications, and cybersecurity. The complexity of service delivery on mobile and fixed networks continues to rise, and customers are demanding more than ever before.

CSPs are reacting by redesigning and rebuilding their portfolio of assets and opportunities in order to provide a fluid user experience. Leading operators are going above and beyond to not only survive but thrive in this new landscape. They are focusing on strategic areas to unlock competitive differentiation and growth while laying this digital foundation, beginning with transforming their customer experiences.

Bringing the organization and its channels together

One of the most serious issues in current CSP customer experiences is that disconnected departments and systems make it impossible to provide exceptional customer service. Issue resolution slows and customer satisfaction remains low without a complete picture of a customer's product and service usage, operational performance, service interactions, and related information.

No customer wants to be in the dark, and no operator wants to be in the cross hairs of regulators with impacted services exacerbated by a slow response. Consider a network outage that affects a coverage area. Because of centralized visibility and operational insights:

centralized visibility and operational insights:

A well-connected organization enhances the overall issue resolution experience for customers by ensuring better preparedness and the ability to mitigate the impact of operational issues.

Operators are in the business of supporting their customers 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Connecting workflows across departments, systems, and processes enables a unified view of customer issues and drives accountability across the organization. This enables greater efficiency and effectiveness in resolving customer issues, resulting in significant business value.

Enhance agent productivity and efficiency

Business customers frequently have complex solutions in place as well as an increasing number of connected applications, so accurate and knowledgeable professionals are required to adequately support these extensive integration. With contract renewals, telecom services for clients frequently change, causing a ripple effect across pricing, core services, service level agreements (SLAs), capacity levels, and customer support levels. It is critical to have solid customer insight during these transitions in order to properly address customer issues and concerns.

Knowledge is the key piece in ensuring client satisfaction and an organization's wheels turning smoothly. To get the most up-to-date information into the hands of the agent who needs it, knowledge must be captured, centralized, and made accessible.

Analytic, automation, and machine learning capabilities all give agents superpowers that allow them to increase call resolution efficiency, which leads to higher agent and customer satisfaction. Many contact centers are investigating artificial intelligence technologies to differentiate their services, such as content classification, case routing based on agent skills, and smarter chat bots.

Leading CSP customers are leveraging advanced technology to create differentiated customer experiences and smarter operations. Negative customer experiences can have a negative impact on a CSP's reputation and overall brand. Routing customers and agents to the next best action, improving self-service, and expediting case classification all contribute to freeing up agent time to focus on complex issues that require human intervention and ingenuity.

Make something valuable out of what you know

Service providers' ability to diagnose and resolve issues continues to improve, and as a result, they are collecting an exponential amount of data that can be used to advance service assurance and performance management. This information is a gold mine for building an engine that drives improved customer loyalty, lowers churn, and fuels growth.

As the industry becomes more data-driven, more integration of customer service platforms with operations and business support systems (OSS and BSS) is encouraged. By connecting network infrastructure, business applications, and customer visibility, this combination supports better service solutions, improves operational agility, and breaks down organizational silos.

Consolidated systems enable the optimization of operations and customer data, providing providers with a more complete picture of the customer. Understanding all aspects of a customer's product and services enables providers to proactively resolve issues and gain a better understanding of overall performance metrics like response time and churn. The data can also provide actionable insights to improve time to market and agile operations.