How to proactively detect service faults while achieving precision marketing for fixed-line networks

Commercial context

Recent annual revenue growth has been stagnant in fixed-line networks – with shareholder returns reaching only around 4.8% during the pandemic era, according to TM Forum data – so CSPs are now shifting focus to improving quality of development in the fixed-line network domain. As networks become more capable however, they also grow more complex, which carries with it a new set of challenges. One of the chief difficulties the industry faces here is how to bring advanced network capabilities to existing fixed-line networks, without also increasing difficulty in collecting service-quality data, such as information on delays and packet loss.

CSPs must nonetheless master their understanding of user needs through such service-quality data, as well as user-experience metrics, to retain existing customers and gain new ones through precision marketing. Most service quality problems can at present only be solved passively however, by reacting to customer complaints after an incident has occurred. A significant part of the issue is that on current networks, the optical route information travels may be inaccurate or missing, meaning that issues cannot be detected and solved in advance. This can then cause significant impacts on other areas of the business – dissatisfaction can result in churn, lower conversions, and less customer data to use in future marketing campaigns.

Despite significant marketing investments in the BSS domain, conversion rates are often low, due to reputational harm flowing from the issues above, and lack of accurate high-value customer profiles or identification of potential customer groups, which limits precision marketing efforts. Overly generic marketing strategies are a key area for improvement here – specifically via user-specific network operation data enriched with relevant business tags such as user profiles, tariff plans, and bandwidth preferences.

There are then four problems here that require urgent resolution: how to proactively identify and target fixed-network customers with potential requirements; how to improve the accuracy of potential customer portraits; how to improve marketing conversion rates; and how to retain these customers once they have been converted.

The solution

The Digi-boost Connectivity Services Catalyst has therefore developed a tool to detect the causes of service degradation in fixed-line networks and solve them proactively, while using the data gathered to identify new opportunities for precision marketing and introduction of new products. The project team sought to proactively identify the requirements of fixed-line network enterprise customers, and the service issues affecting them, by profiling those customers and the infrastructure they use - in a manner of direct value to marketing departments tasked with improving conversion rates and reducing churn.

The Digi-boost solution helps to solve these issues by providing constant and real-time network insights to monitor the network’s customer experience index and analyze quality changes, to help identify and solve shortcomings ahead of time. By using TMF629, the Customer Management API REST Specification, the project team has been able to diagnose potential network issues for resolution well in advance.

By using this in conjunction with an AI-based analysis of network data, Digi-boost can identify the needs of each enterprise customer and recommend alternative or additional network products where needed. Analysis of operational and marketing data can also help identify lists of potential users with specific business tags under preconfigured rules, which can be directed to marketing systems for targeted decision-making for marketing efforts. The time of AI experts can then be focused on ensuring accuracy of the AI model’s delivery, dealing with data cleaning, or shifting weights where necessary.

Application and wider value

So far, the Digi-boost solution has shown remarkable success in its early deployments – through the proof-of-concept focusing on home broadband for instance, conversion rates for marketing efforts tripled, while labor costs were reduced without corresponding losses in user satisfaction. According to Duan Peng, China Mobile’s project lead, “we expect the Digi-boost connectivity service solution to drive $50m in new revenues year-on-year and are confident it can safeguard our annual income.”

With Digi-boost, CSPs across the world can be confident that there is a solution to deal with some of the drawbacks inherent to combining new and legacy infrastructure – thanks to this Catalyst, they have a blueprint to solving these too, while also arming themselves with the data they need to graduate from generic to highly targeted marketing strategies.