The answer lies in personalization. Customers want to feel like individuals that the brand they choose really understands, as opposed to just another number in a database. Service providers need to make their customers feel valued by knowing what they need and what they want. Personalization can be anything from custom offers to birthday messages or rewards based on customer usage patterns. But to do all of this, telcos need data.

Technology customers have always been concerned about how companies capture and use their data. The media is rife with reports of data privacy breaches and disastrous scenarios that have resulted in a customer’s data falling into the wrong hands. And this isn't exclusive to telecoms—all technology companies are battling the same resistance when it comes to acquiring customer data.

Perceptions of data usage, however, are changing as the public learns about how companies use their data in a positive way. The Deloitte Digital Consumer Trends survey revealed that the number of people concerned about how companies use their data fell by 50 percent between 2018 to 2020. And when we look at public attitudes toward data usage within the telecoms industry, consumer concern is even lower.

According to a survey conducted by Formation, 81 percent of consumers will share basic personal information in exchange for a more personalized customer experience. The tides are turning, and consumers are more willing to share their data with telcos. With consumer cooperation on the rise, it’s important for telcos to have the technology in place to get the most out of this data to enhance CX.

Data, data, everywhere

Telcos have historically struggled to deliver personalization to their customers due to data inaccessibility. The quantity of data that telcos have access to isn't the problem. Data is abundant from systems that handle everything from billing to customer relationship management. But because these systems have developed independently, their data stores have accumulated in silos. So, collecting uniform data sets and creating actionable insights remain challenges.

Telcos have all the data they need to offer their customers a personalized service, but they struggle to bring everything together because of variations in data structure. More recently a new data management tool has become popular, known as a Customer Data Management (CDM) platform. CDM platforms aggregate all an organization’s customer data to create a uniform, accurate and centralized view of the customer in one system that is responsible only for completing personalization activities.

Unlocking value

Aggregating data into one system allows telcos to see all the information they have on their customers in one place—including internal data like customer profiles, billing data, call records, usage patterns and browsing history, as well as unstructured data from external sources like customer social posts. Once this data has been gathered, telcos can run sophisticated machine learning (ML) algorithms to identify patterns that appear across their entire customer base.

Typically, six months of customer data is required for an ML engine to start making predictions but once acquired, it can be used to identify patterns in how customers behave. For example, if there is a certain behavior pattern that customers tend to make before leaving their service provider, ML can identify existing customers that are exhibiting that same behavior and are at risk of churning.

Identifying potential customer losses before they churn allows telcos to intersect and work to prevent the churn by triggering a set of actions, like a special offer, to uncertain customers. Artificial intelligence (AI) is used to rectify the solution in a timely way by sending a message to the customer advising them that they have earned an exclusive offer due to their previous loyalty, for example.

This enriches CX by offering a personalized predictive service. A recent McKinsey report revealed that 93 percent of businesses use surveys as their primary measure of CX performance but only six percent were confident in this method’s efficacy. By using data in the right way, telcos can gain actionable insights into their customer base to better understand their needs, both on an individual level and collectively, to pre-empt problems in the customer journey. For CX, this is extremely beneficial, ensuring that telcos meet the needs of their customers and tend to their frustration before they become dealbreakers.

To deliver exceptional CX at every step of the customer journey, from onboarding to subscription management and troubleshooting, telcos should create a comprehensive technology stack with several microservices to integrate eSIM capabilities, ML and AI to offer their customers a tailored, unique experience. Telcos need a seamless CX to remain relevant in our increasingly digital world. Customers want it and technology can provide it, so it’s time for telcos to deliver for the benefits to all.