Other technologies that reside at the edge of the network can be hugely beneficial as well—namely, virtual customer premises equipment (vCPE), Virtualized Network Functions (VNFs) and interconnects.

Is there any reasons CSPs cannot become cloud service brokers to provide everything beyond the edge? CSPs can provide the connectivity TO the cloud. Why not into the cloud? Because of virtualization, CSPs can now quickly and easily reach agreements and federate to increase their respective footprints to better service their customers.

There is an incredible amount of emerging communications technology out there for CSPs to reshape their network environments, establish money-making revenue streams, and exceed customer expectations. Massive network upgrades aren't necessary to maintain high-quality service delivery; companies can achieve similar results by embracing some or all of the telecom innovations that ultimately wrap around the evolution of digital customer experience.

What should Telcos be doing right now?

Self-service on-demand capabilities
Customers everywhere today expect to have some control over account management, and they do not want to wait for a company to respond to a query or service request when they have the option to do it themselves. Whether it’s offering troubleshooting tools or online billing management platforms, CSPs should provide their customers some degree of agency to control their accounts.

Salesforce contributor Nicola Brookes noted that customer portals serve a critical function in this regard, giving users tools to manage their accounts, answer questions and address problems without ever needing to pick up a phone or wait for an email response.

For instance, bandwidth-on-demand can be a powerful feature to include in a CSP cloud portal. Users can increase their bandwidth at a moment’s notice without needing to call an account manager or carrier representative and have the terms of contract drastically changed. Instead, they can simply select to pay for a temporary increase in bandwidth to meet situational requirements.

Other popular on-demand options include SD-WAN, vCPE, and Interconnects, among many others. Customers should have the ability to add or build out these services as needed at any time.

Single pane of glass for a consolidated view of all your IT services
Whatever features are included in a CSP portal, customers don’t want to have to jump through a lot of hoops to take advantage of them. That means simplifying the user interface, so every tool and service is readily available through a single pane of glass. Having a consolidated view is important because CSPs have historically been known to use separate portals for multiple services, especially during times of M&A. Creating a single platform to manage every aspect of a user’s account will provide a major competitive advantage.

User experience is critical to any platform’s success, and empowering customers to spin up anything from bandwidth-on-demand and SDN to SD-WAN services and next-generation firewalls from a single platform will greatly improve satisfaction levels.