Different Decade - Same Telco Challenges - New Reality
Julia Ochinero
Experienced Head of Marketing | Chair, Marketing Council, Founders Creative | AI Marketing Tools | AI/ML Marketing | HP Executive Leadership | Early Stage | Fortune 50
Different Decade
I said “a few decades ago” in a session at a recent CX Exchange Telecoms event. It gave me pause. Ok, do not look at my LinkedIn profile to determine my age. My profile has been “botoxed.” ;)
The point is - last month, as I presented a vision of a subscriber experience automated by cloud and AI, I believed in the potential as only one who has experienced the nascent stages of innovation could.
Same Challenges
The challenges in the Telco industry are not that different from when I was at Openwave marketing the first mobile Internet browser, or at HPE introducing Network Functions Virtualization (NFV - or -Telco Cloud.) or marketing voice-automated prepaid phone activation while at BeVocal (acquired by Nuance.) All of these vendors innovated to help Telcos speed-time-to-market of new services, create operational efficiencies and to drive greater Average Revenue Per User (ARPU.)
New Reality
The pursuit of these goals is nothing new. What is new?
- Consumer Adoption of Voice Biometrics
- AI and Automation in Telecom Self-Service.
- 5G Network Slicing Enablement .
These innovations fascinate me while liberating Telcos from the old way of doing things.
Subscriber Authentication Via Voice Biometrics “is” a Reality
Voice Biometrics is one of my personal favorites. While at Nuance, (which I joined via BeVocal acquisition,) I led a primary research study on consumer readiness for voice biometrics and the enterprise’s willingness to adopt this as a means to authenticate a caller. It was too early at the time. Consumers didn’t want to give away a part of their “biological” self. Banks and other enterprises didn’t want to push this too aggressively before consumers were ready. They needed to protect brand and loyalty. But not anymore. According to Reports and Data, the global Voice Biometrics market is expected to reach USD almost $4B by the year 2026. For comparison it was $.69 Billion in 2018.
AI “is” Enabling Greater Efficiencies
IDC indicates that 63.5% of operators are investing in new AI systems to improve their infrastructure. My favorite AI application for Telcos is self-service via a conversational assistant. Known as virtual assistants, they have learned to automate and scale one-on-one conversations efficiently. What is great about the Talkdesk solution I’m working on now, is that like the computational knowledge graph I worked on at Maana, Inc. the model improves with time as human agents add intelligence along the way. So each engagement and customer interaction learns from the previous one continually improving the interactions.
5G and Network Slicing "will" Ease Expansion into B2B
Now, as the infrastructure starts to separate from the services layer, we’ll see Telcos expand more into IoT, Wholesale and B2B opportunities. I am super excited about the emergence of B2B opportunities. As 5G-enabled network slicing provides an opportunity to deliver customized instances of connectivity, I think entire new markets in SMB, Healthcare, Banking and others are going to provide Telcos with that greatly needed expansion.
I truly believe we are finally at the inflection point where we are going to solve some of the Telco challenges.
Do you agree, Telco is talking about the same problems we were years ago? Do you feel we're at an inflection point? Post your thoughts below.
Let’s Go!
PhD. Student in Accounting, Bayes Business School
3 年Hi Julia!?You’re showing your age there. ?? The UP.Browser must date back to the late 90s??The challenges are different if you dig under the surface and look wider. Here are some examples. In the late 90s mobile penetration was 50-60% per pop and so the biggest and ‘easiest’ growth lever was growing subs.?These days top-line growth comes from upsell/ cross-sell and RPI price increases!? A corollary is that churn management has greater focus nowadays (and hence focus on CX). Another major difference is the fight for mindshare.?The late 90s was a very operator-centric world.?The main services were voice and text (operator provided) and “data services” were primitive.?These days operators must work very hard to remain relevant as the market focuses more on devices (hardware and OS) and apps/ services. Some things have not changed.?Billing is still the main reason customers contact their operators.?Also, although new entrants remain a threat, the nature of this challenge is changing.?In the 90s/ early 00s, this was new operators and MVNOs (mainly in the consumer segment).?Today, whilst the traditional industry players are consolidating, new entrants are coming from the private 5G network space (e.g., Verizon) and hyper-scalers.
CEO, STL Partners
3 年Nice analysis. I agree that the goals - greater innovation speed to drive ARPU up and greater operational efficiency to drive costs down remain the same for telcos. I think the latter is often seen as the low-hanging fruit - there's more certainty in reducing costs than in creating new revenue streams. As an industry, we cannot cut our way to growth and improving customer experience does not per se drive revenue growth. It is important, therefore, that telcos focus on doing more (than connectivity) as well as doing it more efficiently if they want to see a return to top-line growth. I would encourage telco execs - at operators and vendors - to explore how the tech changes you outline - biometric authentication, AI, 5G - can drive growth as well as efficiency.