Personalized customer experience from concept to commercial deployment
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s biggest operator, Saudi Telecom Company (stc), wanted to enhance customer experience by implementing a personalization and contextualization engine at digital touchpoints and on social media channels.
16 Sep 2020
Personalized customer experience from concept to commercial deployment
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s biggest operator, Saudi Telecom Company (stc), wanted to enhance customer experience by implementing a personalization and contextualization engine at digital touchpoints and on social media channels. With partners, it developed the AI and analytics driven engine in a first proof of concept Catalyst project. Unusually, the current Catalyst is a demonstration of that architecture in commercial use within stc.
The telco championed both phases of the Catalyst project and in the latest, Enhancing customer experience through digital personalization – Phase II, it is supported by participants Nokia, SAS, and Teradata.
The Saudi market is unusual and highly dynamic. It has a population of almost 33.5 million, with expats making up about 37% of the total, while about 40% is under 25, and fewer than 10% over 55.
Phase II of the Catalyst project builds on the first, and the video below provides a good summary of what was achieved in Phase I: Digital personalization platform for customer experience. A big advantage of developing solutions in a Catalyst project is faster progress because the team can start with a blank canvas and focus on a single issue away from the usual business processes of large organizations.
In the first phase, the team used the TM Forum Information Framework (also known as SID). This widely used information model was incorporated into the digital architecture. The team used insights from the data model to help it model the topics within its Business Information Model (BIM) process. It also implemented an event broker in the architecture using Apache Kafka, which is a publish-subscribe based, durable messaging system.
TM Forum’s Business Process Framework (also known as eTOM), helped the team work out how to reuse resources to create different services, which were sufficiently open and scalable to meet stc’s digital personalization needs.
The team built a prototype app, from which it learned that putting put promotions on the first page made a big difference to the uptake.
Compared with last year, stc has seen a considerable rise in take up, but volume is not the only success factor. The offers are now more lucrative for both the customer and the operator because stc was able to guide customers from the start of the journey, taking them from awareness of offers to freebie versions. From there the operator was able to cross-sell and upsell stc’s products and services, and to the next level of commitment, such as a new handheld device or buying a new connection etc.
Also stc’s social media teams monitor how offers fare and which are popular. This helps the operator to move away from the traditional marketing costs spent on advertising. By promoting its offers on social media too it receives instant feedback about whether an offer is something customers like or not. That feedback helps stc to refine its promotions, content and channel experience.
The CSP’s ultimate goal is a “segment of one” as the learning evolves and an ever more accurate picture of each customer is created. This is seen as a kind of personalization nirvana, but of course it all depends on how the customers react to it, and everyone is different, so the operator knows it will win some and lose others. Part of the point of this approach, though, is not to shy away from experimenting.
A good example of this is that lockdown resulted in a huge increase in the consumption of streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime, and stc’s own Jawwy TV (which focuses on localized content), and a move away from traditional marketing and content. Having clear insight into this trend helped stc adapt to it quickly and to continue its alignment with consumers’ preferences.
Watch the team demonstrate Enhancing customer experience through digital personalization – Phase II in this video as part of the Catalyst Digital Showcase.
The telco championed both phases of the Catalyst project and in the latest, Enhancing customer experience through digital personalization – Phase II, it is supported by participants Nokia, SAS, and Teradata.
The Saudi market is unusual and highly dynamic. It has a population of almost 33.5 million, with expats making up about 37% of the total, while about 40% is under 25, and fewer than 10% over 55.
Phase II of the Catalyst project builds on the first, and the video below provides a good summary of what was achieved in Phase I: Digital personalization platform for customer experience. A big advantage of developing solutions in a Catalyst project is faster progress because the team can start with a blank canvas and focus on a single issue away from the usual business processes of large organizations.
Guidelines and customization
In the first phase, the team used the TM Forum Information Framework (also known as SID). This widely used information model was incorporated into the digital architecture. The team used insights from the data model to help it model the topics within its Business Information Model (BIM) process. It also implemented an event broker in the architecture using Apache Kafka, which is a publish-subscribe based, durable messaging system.
TM Forum’s Business Process Framework (also known as eTOM), helped the team work out how to reuse resources to create different services, which were sufficiently open and scalable to meet stc’s digital personalization needs.
The team built a prototype app, from which it learned that putting put promotions on the first page made a big difference to the uptake.
The offers became more personalized too, based on the next-best engagement engine the team built to look at customers’ different behaviours and patterns. This enables stc’s marketing team, analytics team and technology team to work together more closely. In collaboration with partners in this space, especially SAS, Teradata and Nokia, the operator was able to set up an ecosystem which made its offers much more personal and engaging, and enabled a much faster time to market.
Profitable success factors
Compared with last year, stc has seen a considerable rise in take up, but volume is not the only success factor. The offers are now more lucrative for both the customer and the operator because stc was able to guide customers from the start of the journey, taking them from awareness of offers to freebie versions. From there the operator was able to cross-sell and upsell stc’s products and services, and to the next level of commitment, such as a new handheld device or buying a new connection etc.
So far the conversion rate as has been quite successful, but it is still early days and the experience is new to the customers, and stc has yet to see how well it can be sustained. The key to that sustainability is using AI and analytics to gain feedback from customers and continuous analysis of their behavior. For instance, the company monitors which offers go viral and which promotions prove popular.
Social media at stc
Also stc’s social media teams monitor how offers fare and which are popular. This helps the operator to move away from the traditional marketing costs spent on advertising. By promoting its offers on social media too it receives instant feedback about whether an offer is something customers like or not. That feedback helps stc to refine its promotions, content and channel experience.
The CSP’s ultimate goal is a “segment of one” as the learning evolves and an ever more accurate picture of each customer is created. This is seen as a kind of personalization nirvana, but of course it all depends on how the customers react to it, and everyone is different, so the operator knows it will win some and lose others. Part of the point of this approach, though, is not to shy away from experimenting.
A good example of this is that lockdown resulted in a huge increase in the consumption of streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime, and stc’s own Jawwy TV (which focuses on localized content), and a move away from traditional marketing and content. Having clear insight into this trend helped stc adapt to it quickly and to continue its alignment with consumers’ preferences.
Watch the team demonstrate Enhancing customer experience through digital personalization – Phase II in this video as part of the Catalyst Digital Showcase.
