The Future of Telecom Providers Depends on Improving the Digital Experience

With reduced customer sign-ups and increasing attrition, telecommunications companies need to improve their customers’ digital experiences to thrive in the post-pandemic era. Successful telcos will adopt strategies to recoup recent losses by analyzing customer needs and offering personalized solutions.

The recent pandemic is a global phenomenon that has impacted everything we do, and communication service providers (CSPs) are no strangers to those impacts. Telecommunications services companies are experiencing sharply reduced new customer sign-ups and high customer attrition during the pandemic. The activations of the latest smartphone models decreased by more than 40% in the U.S. alone around mid-March, according to Comlinkdata.

However, this phenomenon presents an opportunity for change in the CSP mindset and offers telecommunications providers a chance to regain a portion of that loss by treating customers as long-term assets and building loyalty and business. There is a need to re-invent the Telco digital experience, explore new business opportunities, and release new features faster.

Emerging telecommunication industry trends

With digital transformation, telecommunications services companies can rebuild their market positions, reimagine their business systems, and create innovative offerings for customers. Let’s discuss some of the post-pandemic trends that can help Telcos thrive.

Re-inventing the telecom digital experience

Today, more than 50% of the customer’s buyer journey is digital and they engage with multiple channels during the decision-making process. Great customer journeys call for seamless customer experience, clear cross-channel pathways, and innovative touchpoints. These can be achieved with headless commerce that provides a uniform presentation layer across all channels for consistent customer experience across all platforms.

Collaborating with strategic partners

Communication service providers are moving to adjacent businesses such as finance, IT, media, and more in search of new opportunities. However, such offerings usually involve collaborating with ecommerce consulting experts who bring unique expertise on how branching into new markets can complement existing Telco customer experiences.

Eliminating legacy systems

There are a handful of legacy systems popular in telecommunications and have been used for a long time. However, for selling in a fast-paced digital world, telecoms need to reach the market faster with new features. This can be made possible by adopting open source commerce technologies that offer more flexibility for integrating new technologies and working with tech partners that specialize in servicing the Telecommunications industry.

Thinking like a customer

Most telecommunication providers treat customer experience as just a series of touchpoints such as customer service, an ecommerce website, marketing materials, and more. However, only by analyzing the customer journey from the customer’s perspective from beginning to end (and how those touchpoints build one digital experience), can Telcos truly understand how to improve their performance.

Using predictive analysis to gain insights

Telcos already have a massive amount of data in their possession, mostly stored in silos. Many communication providers still struggle to transform that data into meaningful insights. Predictive analytics in the telecommunications industry has not been used to its full potential. With the use of AI, automation, and tools like customer data platforms, that data can help in customer profiling, behaviour-based customer insights, customer sentiment analysis, and much more.

Helping telecoms build the future

Post-pandemic, ensuring resilient connectivity 24x7, contactless payments and security will become even more critical for the longevity of a communication service provider. Meeting customer expectations by comprehending each customer segment's value and tailoring solutions accordingly will need to be a major priority for those tasked with updating business strategies for Telcos. Providing a seamless ecommerce experience is an integral part of the personalized experience that CSPs want to offer new-age customers. Learn more about Acro Commerce and how we can help Telecommunications organizations develop a cohesive digital experience strategy through our tech partnerships. 

Miles has written extensively on emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, blockchain, the internet of things, cloud, DevOps, and microservices. He has a keen interest in ecommerce, including CMS, and front-end and back-end technologies.