The platform approach to transforming CSP customer experience

FREE PERSPECTIVE

Customer experience is a strategic priority for communications service providers (CSPs) today. Customer behaviour and expectations are undergoing a seismic change; customers have been significantly influenced by their experiences in engaging with digital-native companies such as Amazon and Netflix. Traditional, assisted channels for customer engagement (such as in-person visits to large stores and phone calls to expansive call centres) have long been considered to be a strength of large CSPs, but these are becoming unfashionable because customers are shifting to digital, unassisted channels en masse. The COVID-19 pandemic has further accentuated this shift thanks to the social distancing and working-from-home norms that the crisis has brought about.

The COVID-19 pandemic has also highlighted the importance of agility, in order to swiftly respond to market changes or competitor initiatives. An agile architectural foundation that can accelerate CSPs’ ability to swiftly make changes to their core offerings and comprehensively engage with customers over digital channels is a necessity, especially when digital-native companies (who are increasingly competing with CSPs) already have this ability. CSPs remain considerably behind digital natives when it comes to offering real-time, personalised and streamlined digital engagement, despite their increasing emphasis on customer experience. Many CSPs were late to start their digital channel transformations, so most still have much to do in order to provide a digital experience that is comparable to that of a digital-native company. The majority of CSPs have invested in basic self-care functionalities, but these are far from being self-contained and are insufficient to drive deep engagement with customers. Most CSPs also have large call-centre operations (either outsourced or directly owned) that are responsible for capturing and responding to customer queries and complaints. The cost of these operations is quite high, especially when compared to those of OTT service providers that operate at a comparable scale.