Covid-19 lockdown efforts have forced communications service providers (CSPs) to help their customers digitally transform fast to offset the closure of bricks-and-mortar stores and lengthy call center waiting times. In the fourth Hard Talk debate, Mark Newman, Chief Analyst, TM Forum, talked to senior executives about the state of digital experience in telecoms and how effective operators have been in making digital channels the customer’ default option for getting in touch.Here’s who took part:
- Jerry Smith, Executive Partner, Chief Operating Officer & Principal Consultant, Asia, The Ogilvy Group
- Isabelle Hajri, Chief Marketing Officer, Ooredoo Algeria
- Jason Rutherford, SVP & General Manager, Oracle Communications
- Miguel Quiroga, CEO, Visible
Newman explained that if telecoms operators can move their relationships with customers online, the rewards will be great.
“The more data about their customers that CSPs can capture using online channels, the more effective they will be at managing their relationships proactively; learning about their habits and preferences and cross-selling and upselling them to other products and services,” he said, adding that this also gives them the opportunity to prune their extremely costly retail footprint.
Following is a sampling of what the panelists had to say. You can listen to the full Hard Talk broadcast in the video embedded above..
On the current state of telco digital experience
Smith: “I think that it’s quite sporadic. That is really because I believe that many organizations, not just the operators, are seeing the transition (or the digital transformation) that they’re going through as more digitizing their business, rather than creating a really great digital ecosystem – one that provides value exchange on consumers’ terms – and I think very few companies are getting to that point.”
Rutherford: “The telco has traditionally had very, very low NPS [net promoter score] scores. We’re almost the industry that customers love to hate. I think it’s because traditionally there hasn’t been a lot of interaction between the customer and the carrier: You get your service; you’re gone.”
Hajri: “We don’t need to digitize first in order to deliver digital, and that’s important. We can do both, and both won’t go at the same speed.”
On becoming fully digital
Hajri: “We do [have an internal digital target], and it’s group driven, so it’s a very hard target to have on us… What I can say is that it’s even part of the CEO scorecard. It’s part of all our objectives for the entire management team, so we have an objective to digitalize and to be digital, that’s for sure. We are getting ready for it. We are geared to provide the digital experience, a good one. But then, if our customer base is not using it… I mean, okay, we are providing incentives, but we still need to answer the phone if they are calling us.”
Quiroga: “I have a personal belief that the shift from a consumer doing interaction in a traditional manner to digital is much more of an education, and much more the quality of the digital experience.”
Rutherford: “I was talking to a colleague yesterday about this, and we were talking about why banks versus telcos do so much better. My colleagues said to me, ‘Well, have you downloaded your carrier’s app on your phone?’ And I said ‘No, I have my bank’s app because I use it’ – and there's compelling value in that. I don’t know if there’s compelling value in my carrier’s app or not, and if you’re not creating that experience to drive me to that digital interaction, I’m still going to just interact with you in the old legacy way.”
Digital experience during the pandemic
Hajri: “We communicated so much digitally; we communicated so much in the way customers can communicate with us – use digital channels, be more online – that now it gave us a kick for the next for the next month and it accelerated everything. I just hope that we will keep the pace, because it showed that when we focus, we can.”
Quiroga: “So we've done all the obvious things like helping people who are struggling with bills and those kinds of things, but we also created a campaign called ‘visible acts of kindness’, which is purpose built to highlight people’s goodness to each other, and the acts of kindness they provided to each other – and providing surprise and delight moments for those consumers when they highlight it. We’ve seen such a massive response to that, that’s been completely organic. And those are the moments where we think we really are showing up with our consumers a very different way.”
Smith: “China Mobile as well has done something with video, so they’re creating a video platform in a market that actually imbues so much video on here, and then [they’re] starting to actually create OTT [over-the-top] solutions with other OTT players to provide stuff on that platform to create more usage, which creates more ARPU [average revenue per user], which creates a sort of stickiness that’s reducing churn. They're even creating tools that allow consumers to become key opinion leaders, create your own video on there.”
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