Innovation in Telecommunications:
Enhancing Customer Engagement
March 25, 2021
Event Highlights
Telecommunications customers are becoming more demanding, expecting the latest in product offerings and the highest levels of customer service. The industry as a whole has had to work quickly to implement improvements in the field, operations and customer engagement. Increasingly, telecommunications companies are turning to highly automated solutions to meet customer demands, elevate the expertise of the field force and drive operational efficiencies.
This virtual roundtable convened thought leaders and leading-edge practitioners from the telecommunications industry to share how they are applying innovative technologies and what the results have been.
PARTICIPANTS
Fabio Bruggioni, Director of Global Consumer, Telefónica
Karine Dussert-Sarthe, EVP Group Marketing, Design and Open Innovation, Orange
Robin Farnan, Executive Vice President – Operations & Engineering, Colt Technology Services
Tony Geheran, Executive Vice-President and Chief Customer Officer, Telus
Cliff Hagan, Executive Vice President, Customer Operations, Charter Communications
Sean Lee, SVP Consumer Sales, Verizon
Chet Patel, Managing Director, Commercial, BT
Utpal Mangla, VP & Senior Partner; Global Leader – Telco Media Entertainment Industry Center of Competency, IBM
MODERATED BY
John H. Butler, Senior Analyst-Telecommunications Services & Equipment, Bloomberg Intelligence
Click here to view the video of the full discussion.
Here’s what they had to say:
Telecommunications companies are making great strides in using automation and AI to increase efficiency and improve the customer experience. As Utpal Mangla, VP & Senior Partner; Global Leader – Telco Media Entertainment Industry Center of Competency, IBM points out “Many organizations were on a one to three-year roadmap with the digital transformation strategy, but in a post-pandemic scenario, companies have realized the importance of leveraging these digital technologies and have accelerated the pace of transformation on an unprecedented scale. Digital is essential and enterprises are making massive investments in developing these innovative capabilities to enhance the customer experience. This is the only way we believe to transform and succeed in the marketplace.”
While new technologies are exciting both for the company and for the customer, Sean Lee, SVP Consumer Sales, Verizon reminds us that the retail space remains a vital part of the customer experience, “ Very, very important for the customer. It’s one thing to hear about 5G and other cutting edge solutions, but it’s different than having a knowledgeable representative in front of you translating that technology, and how does that fit into your lifestyle? How does it make it a little bit easier on you? That’s the importance of what the retail store looks like.”
Cliff Hagan, Executive Vice President, Customer Operations, Charter Communications explains how automating the movement of data enables an omnichannel experience for the customer “We’re seeing really good customer feedback on getting that data moving in a real-time manner to the point of engagement and keeping it along the continuum of their conversation with us. Whatever channel they come in or use, that information stays along with them. So we do a much better job using AI in engaging the customer in the way they want with less friction.”
Karine Dussert-Sarthe, EVP Group Marketing, Design and Open Innovation, Orange discussed AI as a tool for faster, more customer-centric development. “I have a profound belief that AI and machine learning will make a solid contribution when it comes to accelerating for the development”. Dussert-Sarthe further explained “I strongly believe, and we’ve experienced this, that you can reduce a lot of the test and learn phase, but also the design phase.” She summarized “And I think what is really fundamental here is that right now, you can concept test 100 prototypes at the same time, and then all of a sudden you can design what is really best for your customer, almost, not real-time, but almost in real-time.”
Tony Geheran, Executive Vice-President and Chief Customer Officer, Telus also spoke to the importance of customer-centric design, “So first and foremost, and within TELUS it’s digital by design, it’s looking for radical simplification, minimizing the steps in any given process, and then looking at how you can enable and facilitate an easy customer experience through that.” But Geheran acknowledged that there are different demographics to service, with varying needs, “We really would like to go much more but we also wanna make sure that we put a humanized face to our digital experience, so it’s not like code, two clicks and that’s the experience. We wanna make sure that where customers need it, and certain segments will have longer need for the human support process than maybe the younger demographic, so we’re kind of tailoring the business and tailoring our resources to fit where we’re seeing the demand and customer behavior change.”
Chet Patel, Managing Director, Commercial, BT also observed that the customer base still wants human contact as well as automation, “many of these customers now want a single journey which is automated, but gives them the assurance that they can fall back into an agent should they want to via voice or via chat or even via WhatsApp or social media.” Patel went on to share how he measures success “Yeah, so I was gonna say repeat business, to be honest, because the progress we’re making is good, but it’ll only be completed and you can only measure it if customers say, “Hey, that was a really good experience. I’ll have some more of that, please.”
Robin Farnan, Executive Vice President – Operations & Engineering, Colt Technology Services shared, “ I’m also looking at AI not just to solve problems, but also tell me what the problem is.” Farnan provided an example, “Last year we looked at tens of thousands of customer comments that came back through our NPS, and I think Tony, you said it, the main feedback from our customers was “Making it easier to work with you and make it effortless.” So we said, right, okay, NPS is cool. I mean, we got industry leader, we were at 69 NPS last year, but we changed the NES, the Net Easy Score, so obviously, the technology is not just helping us solve problems, it’s actually telling us what customers want, which I think is really cool.”
Fabio Bruggioni, Director of Global Consumer, Telefónica shared that they continue to find use cases to justify the investment in AI, “So for example, we launched a few months ago an initiative oriented to help our customers to review their devices using artificial intelligence. I think that for me, was a great example of how to prove to our CFO that it makes a lot of sense. Keep investing in it because the conversion rate was much better than in the past. So I think that organizing the data and finding very concrete use cases will be helpful to move forward.”
This Bloomberg Roundtable was Proudly Sponsored By
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