Digital persona twins: The future of personalized customer experience in telecoms

The opinions expressed within this article are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the views of TM Forum.

Telecommunication companies are constantly looking for new ways to better understand customer needs and to deliver personalized experiences that drive loyalty and satisfaction. Popular concepts for gaining insights into customer behavior and preferences are personas and digital twins. Personas provide a humanized and simplified fictional representation of customer segments, while digital twins are virtual replicas of physical objects or systems that can simulate their behavior.

However, there are limitations to these approaches, including privacy concerns, especially when creating individual digital twins which represent specific customers. This is where Digital Persona Twins come in, bridging the gap between personas and digital twins while addressing the privacy concerns associated with them.

What are digital persona twins?

Digital Persona Twins (DPTs) are a new approach to create virtual representations of a CSP's customer segments. The DPT represents a composite of the characteristics of a group of customers with similar preferences and behaviors. Their behaviors, preferences, and needs can be simulated to deliver personalized customer experiences without compromising privacy or security. Through real-time analysis of their DPTs, companies can identify trends and opportunities and adjust their strategies accordingly.

Creating digital persona twins from customer data

To create Digital Persona Twins, companies must first analyze customer data to create personas. This data can be gathered from a variety of sources, including customer relationship management (CRM) systems, online behavior, social media, and surveys. Each persona should be a representation of a specific customer segment, including demographics, preferences, behavioral patterns, and other relevant information.

In a second step, machine learning algorithms are used to analyze the data to create digital twins that represent the persona. It is important to note that privacy must be maintained throughout the entire process. This can be achieved by anonymizing customer data and ensuring that it is only used for the specific purpose of creating DPTs.

Benefits of digital persona twins

• Enhanced personalization

Digital Persona Twins enable telecommunications companies to create more personalized experiences for their customers. By grouping customers based on their characteristics and preferences, companies can tailor their products and services to meet the needs of each group. For example, a DPT for a group of tech-savvy customers could have a distinct set of features and capabilities than a DPT for a group of customers who prefer more traditional services. This level of personalization is not possible with traditional digital twins that focus on individual customers.

• Improved efficiency

Generating individual digital twins for each customer can be time consuming and costly. With DPTs, companies can create a single twin that represents a group of customers, reducing the time and cost associated with designing and maintaining multiple digital twins. This allows companies to allocate resources more efficiently and focus on delivering a better customer experience.

• Data privacy protection

One of the biggest concerns with digital twins is customer privacy. By linking digital twins to a persona, companies can achieve a more secure and private environment for customer data. As the DPT is not linked to an individual customer, there is no risk of personal information being compromised.

• Flexibility

Digital Persona Twins offer more flexibility than traditional digital twins. As customer needs and preferences change, DPTs can be updated and modified to reflect those changes. This flexibility allows telcos to adapt to changing customer needs and provide a better overall experience.

Challenges of digital personal twins

While DPTs offer many advantages over traditional digital twins, there are still some challenges that need to be addressed. One of the biggest dares is creating accurate personas that represent the characteristics and preferences of a group of customers. This requires a significant amount of data analysis and modeling to ensure that the DPT accurately reflects the group it represents.

Another task is ensuring that the DPT is flexible enough to adapt to changing customer needs while maintaining its accuracy. This requires ongoing monitoring and analysis of customer behavior and preferences to ensure that the DPT is always up to date.

Finally, there is a risk that customers may feel that their personal preferences and characteristics are being overlooked in favor of a composite persona. To address these concerns, CSPs need to be transparent about how DPTs are created and secure that customers understand the benefits of this approach.

Digital Persona Twins offer an innovative approach to creating personalized experiences for customers. By combining the benefits of digital twins and personas, telcos can deliver personalized services to their customers while complying with privacy regulations. Ultimately, the adoption of DPTs can provide a competitive advantage in an industry where personalized services and customer centricity are key drivers of success.