Lack of access to new technology impacts customer experience

Denying teams access to new technology that can solve old problems exacerbates a range of difficult business support system (BSS) and customer experience (CX) challenges for communications service providers (CSPs).

For our recent report, Improving customer experience in B2B markets, we surveyed more than 100 CSP experts across five global regions. The survey revealed that one-third rated “lack or denial of access to new technology that can solve old problems” as a major challenge.

Further analysis shows that this cohort is also far more likely to struggle with challenges ranging from a lack of in-house skills, poor data quality and legacy system limitations, to a lack of real-time visibility into CX.

A lack of access to new problem-solving technology is not the root cause of each of these common challenges. But this group clearly believes they could solve more of these problems given access to new tech as well as to the skillsets, or people with those skillsets, to leverage it effectively.

Access to new tech alleviates classic problems

Our survey findings also show that the inverse holds true; the 19% of CSP experts that rate lack of access to technology a minor challenge are seven times more likely to rate lack of in-house skills a minor challenge; six times more likely to rate real-time CX visibility a minor challenge; and five times more likely to rate systems and process integration a minor challenge.

The 47% of CSPs that rate lack of access to new tech as a medium challenge are, however, twice as likely to rate legacy systems limitations and the need to gain real-time CX visibility as major challenges. In other words, if lack of tech access is a challenge at all, it can limit a CSP’s ability to overcome CX barriers created by legacy technology and a lack of customer-centric integration.

As an industry, we have seen CSPs adopt new cloud-native technologies and solutions to drive their digital initiatives and create new types of customer experiences. In the B2C world, we have seen low hanging fruit like new digital brands and improved web shops rolled out on top of new BSS solution stacks.

In the B2B world, we are beginning to see more focus on vertical-specific market strategies and a move to add as much zero-touch and self-serve automation as possible, as well as more partner and customer integration. But it is clear from our survey results that denying teams access to new technology and related skills is a surefire way to force them to continue to struggle with the same costly problems that plague customer experiences and business operations