Can My Service Provider Be Digital? 3 Keys to a Re-Imagining a Digital User Relationship
The theme of Digital Transformation has blanketed the communications industry against a backdrop of intense competition, M&A and changing user behaviours. Service providers talk of how they want to move at ‘Internet Speed’ and not ‘Telecom Speed’, to defend their role in the digital lifestyles that encompass TV, communications, and the connected home. This is a digital lifestyle from which service providers seem increasingly shut out. To reclaim their audience, they need to embark on Digital Transformation. But much like many buzzwords before, “Digital Transformation” has the ambiguity to mean everything and nothing, all at the same time.
With one specific lens on the topic, we can compare how a digital pioneer, Apple, has transformed (and continues to transform) the way we interact with screens and services. While many volumes could be written to contrast your typical cable or telecom provider with Apple, I see 3 key ways Apple threads a Digital Experience throughout all of its devices and services.
1. Onboarding Always Starts with a Digital ID
Earlier this year, I upgraded both my iPhone and my iPad. I upgraded my iPhone through a telecom retail outlet, and upgraded my iPad at the Apple store. The contrast between manual and digital here was astounding. The Telco store first combined a long line-up with a complicated discussion of pricing plans. Next, the sales associate took my phone and manually replaced a small SIM card with a precisely engineered paperclip. Then, he and I both crowded over the 5 inch screen as he guided me to restore my old Apple profile on my new device.
My Apple-store acquired iPad (which I use over WI-Fi and involves no telecom provider intervention), was the Christmas-morning like, unboxing experience that Apple has made famous. All I needed to do was enter my Apple-ID on my new device, in the comfort of my own living room and my entire Apple universe synchronized around me on this beautiful new screen, which was absent the Telco store associate’s fingerprints.
I’d go so far as to say that Apple’s ability to digitally identify and on-board users with no manual intervention is the magic behind this whole unboxing phenomenon. Stark white packaging and beveled corners are only one element of the experience. Being able to go from package-to-productivity in one easy digital journey is the rest.
The way Apple begins any on-boarding relationship with the mandatory creation of a digital identity anchors a digital relationship that uniquely identifies me in the Apple ecosystem. After years of using a scattered combination of phone and account numbers, social insurance numbers and serviceable addresses, it’s time telecom and cable operators re-vectored their relationship lifecycles to live and die around a digital ID.
2. A Digital Identity, for Everyone
The four members of my family are active members of the digital life. We watch Netflix on shared iPads, take turns being deejay with Apple Music, communicate with WhatsApp and keep shared calendars of the kids’ sports with TeamSnap. But we are all individuals, each with our own subscriptions, preferences and services that use these shared services in the context of our household group.
Internet players have acknowledged this notion of individuality and moved quickly to implement simple ways for us to delegate services to each other. Even though I pay for Netflix, I have delegated a profile for each family member. My wife manages our kids’ sporting commitments, but has delegated access to their TeamSnap calendars to me. My son has a budding obsession with the band Rush, and so I have delegated access to my Apple iTunes so he can listen to on his iPod.
What this means in an increasingly digital world, is that I don’t have to share passwords anymore. It also means every user’s credentials can represent their own set of services, even if they don’t pay for those services. With the right role-management in place, it also means the person paying the bill will still have some level of governance over who uses what.
Isn’t it strange that the one player that supplies the connectivity (and voice, messaging and video) to me still has almost no capability to go beyond the individual paying the bill when it comes to digital access? While some Telco and cable providers purport to enable individual profiles for some of their services, the existence of this capability is extremely basic or siloed to a specific service resulting in minimal impact to my overall user experience.
Access delegation, individual profiles, and role-based digital experiences are not just features, but emerging table stakes in digital transformation, and I’d like to see family profiles become a basic part of the service provider’s offering.
3. An Ever Expanding Digital Access Ecosystem
Once an internet player has licked the issue of on-boarding digital users to a single killer app, it’s only a matter of time before they enable access to a broad range of content and services via that same digital ID. Isn’t that how Facebook, Apple, Google and now LinkedIn have grown? In a world where user data is key, owning that digital ID is the basis of the formula.
Expanding the Access Ecosystem Around A Digital ID
Service providers have to have many killer apps like voice, messaging and video, and they are all underpinned by the one uber-killer service everyone needs: ACCESS. Shouldn’t every individual user wanting to access a network be gently guided through a process to create a user ID that they can use above all others?
A Re-Imagined Digital User Lifecycle
Service providers need to become agile, remain relevant and reclaim their digital audience. And I have long thought that this is actually underpinned by a re-imagination of the digital user lifecycle. If service providers aren’t successful in this element of digital transformation, their roles in the connected life will be diminished. f you’re interested in exploring this further with me, I’ve penned some further thoughts in this whitepaper. To me, service providers will always sit inextricably linked to the digital user, so long as they remain the dominant provider of network access. It’s time to re-imagine the Digital User Lifecycle to go with it!
Enterprise Customer Success Manager at Teletrac Navman
8 年Great article Gemini, We are seeing projects in the digital experience space with MNO's in Europe currently..
I Help Organizations with Data, Risk & Financial Analysis, AHLEI-certified | SQL, MS Shift, VICTOR CCTV, C-Cure, Visionline | 10+ yrs @ The Ritz-Carlton | 5-Star EoQ Winner
9 年Gemini Waghmare, I enjoyed your article very much. In this digital era, a digital id is a must. Some companies onboarding may now require its clients to create a digital id in order to receive its services (ie. Netflix), while other companies (ie. telecom companies) may only suggest their clients a digital id in order to empower them over the management of most of their account information and features. Whilst Boomlets, Millennials, and most GenX'ers may be used to create a digital id every time they want to enroll into a certain service or benefit over digital means. Some older folks are not. Facebook (due to its social nature) has been able to overcome that objection. Other retail companies have incentivized the use of their digital id through their apps to enhance their customer's buying experience by adding discounts the client can show the cashier directly from their phones. One way of making it easier to this group of customers is the integration of other "signing-in" services (like Facebook / Twitter / Google) that will use their existing profile accounts, usernames, and password to create the digital id for the service they are enrolling in. Another way is for the retail service representative or seller to help the new customer create their digital id, which should only require a username, a password, the service account number, and a PIN through SMS, generated by the system itself. An email, nor personal information should be required to create the digital id. That information can be sync'd directly from the system, when the PIN has been entered and validated at the app level. This can happen for a new, or existing client of a telecom company whilst at one of their retail stores, at a bank when opening a savings / checking account, at the supermarket when asking to enroll in their savings / rewards programs, etc. This avoids the frustration of some of these folks that are new to administering their accounts via digital means, when they try to create their digital id during a call with customer service. At the same time, the service provider can benefit of Big Data to better their services, and gain position advantage over competing companies.
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9 年I consolidated my digital life to Google, i didn't go with the flow many years back because i wanted a slider keyboard and fixed my sights on Android smart phones. I now love my Nexus 6 as it seems to read my mind. These gadgets are like having ones own administrative assistant. I don't like Apple's music service to share music on all devices, they forget about the iPod (yes, some still go to the gym unconnected). They've gone too far with forcing streaming of music from the cloud. I want to download everything to my iPod as I used to, and with my customized recording settings (high fidelity, especially for Classical music).
Attended AL Mustaqbal University College
9 年I wont work in this company