Telcos can connect the world better, when Pega makes them better connected

As the world becomes ever more connected – and interconnected – telcos have the opportunity to lead this revolution. To move beyond commoditization, and become valued for the new connections and relationships they can make possible better than anyone else.

But to do this they need to be better connected themselves. With their customers. With their partners. And across their own organisations. ?

I’m going to look at four areas of focus that will help communication service providers move faster along their journey from telco to techco:

1 Exploit the full range of possibilities of 5G, moving beyond base connectivity

2 Use hyperpersonalization to leverage their unique communication advantage

3 Continually rethink their operation models and reskill their employees through low-code

4 Cut costs and move to a digital-first model, whatever the technical debt

Pega knows how to make it far quicker and simpler for CSPs to connect information across their diverse systems and processes, without having to transform their costly legacy systems first. And to use this to create more engaging and more valuable connections with their customers and vendors.

So people will be happier to deal with them, and to buy more from them. And colleagues will have the power to deliver what matters, faster – with new projects generating returns in weeks rather than years.

1.?????Moving beyond simple connectivity

It’s clear that 5G will provide higher qualities of service, lower latency, and higher bandwidth. This will create a better user experience and a wider range of possibilities for both customers and businesses.

But – at the moment – CSPs are on course to miss this unique opportunity. The size of investment needed for more cell towers, more C-band wireless spectrum and edge cloud computing is seen as greater than the potential growth in customer engagements and revenue.

?Pega can help on both sides of the equation.

?We make complex network rollouts and maintenance far simpler, faster and more streamlined through intelligent automation. And we give CSPs the ability to significantly increase customer acquisition, upsell and retention by creating real connections with their customers through hyperpersonalized sales and service.

For example, we helped Vodafone see a ￡1 increase in ARPU per customer, per month. And Google was able to cut cycle time from 180 days to 30 days.

2.?????Use hyperpersonalization to become NPS leaders

The telecoms industry average NPS is 1, while industry leaders are 28.

Cross-industry leaders are 71.

?So telcos competitors are no longer other telcos – they’re disruptors like Amazon.

Customers now expect a more personalized experience across both traditional and digital channels. And continually-evolving digital channel capabilities are fundamental to improving customer engagement, maximizing lifetime value and reducing churn.

?Telcos could have a unique advantage in customer engagement, as they are an integral part of most customer’s communication channels. But the only way to deliver this is using a real-time, omni-channel AI, like Pega’s Customer Decision Hub, which can route every next best action through a single “customer brain”.

?For instance, we recently helped BT Group increase revenue from cross-sell and up-sell by over 60%, and improved their Net Promoter Score by 5%.

?By implementing a single, real-time decisioning brain to power decisions across BT, EE and across multiple channels, BT Group can now feel more confident that their customers will receive the best experiences no matter which channel they choose to interact through.

?3.?????Rethink operation models and reskill employees through low-code

?Pega gives CSPs the opportunity to continually rethink and adapt their operating model.

?Hundreds of key processes can be automated including customer and partner onboarding, credit & collections, HR processes, contractor management, order processing, procurement, fault diagnostics.

?As when Vodafone Business were able to transform its cumbersome and manual ordering process into a controlled, structured, and streamlined experience.

?By automating its global ordering process, Pega helped Vodafone Business reduce end-to-end cycle time by 40%, synchronize delivery, and completely eliminate order fallout without human intervention.

?But Pega also keeps Vodafone’s people fully in control of order creation and delivery. The single order management platform can be shared and reused in multiple markets – to add a new market to the delivery footprint, users simply drag and drop the elements of the solution they need. This gives the business users control over product configuration while managing delivery in a controlled and structured way.

?Usability is key. With Pega’s low-code capability and suite of tools, users don’t need extensive experience to quickly develop new applications, or adapt existing ones. Which means they can respond more quickly to new opportunities and changes in the market.

?4.?????Cut costs and move to a digital-first model

?Established telcos are competing with digital natives and other disruptors with both hands tied behind their backs.

?On one hand there’s their legacy infrastructure with information siloed across their organizations. And on the other hand there’s their legacy investment in call centres and retail stores.

?Call centres and retail stores are some of the biggest expenses of a telco operation.

Contact centre training is long and expensive – yet turnover is far too high. And with Covid driving more working from home, consistency is harder to maintain. Retail costs per customer are also very high, and Covid fears are likely to keep making it worse.

?The cost, disruption and risk of updating legacy infrastructure and processes can also make it feel safer to just keep patching up through buying in specific point solutions. But this simply locks companies in to even more technical debt, and stops them being able to be digitally agile.

?Pega can give CSPs the time and space to start behaving more like a digital native – and reduce costs – while not discarding existing investments. Using our Intelligent Automation to work with and across legacy systems and applications, bringing together valuable information from complex silos when it’s needed to create a unified understanding of each customer’s journey. Letting established telcos compete in a digital-first landscape right away, rather than waiting until all their hardware and systems have been updated.

?And with Pega they can use the 80:20 rule to increase customer experience and cut the complexity and number of interactions required by expensive channels like call centres and stores. Shift the 80% of requests that are simple and don’t need human intelligence to a frictionless omni-channel digital experience. This allows agents to focus on the 20% of requests that need human intelligence and empathy.

?Whether through live reps or self-serve experiences, customers and agents expect experiences that are guided and intuitive, showing only the data needed to complete a journey and deliver a meaningful outcome. And as customers get younger the shift to digital channels is likely to be preferred – and will be more cost effective.

?For example, to support call volumes Cox Communications needed to unify and standardize its fractured customer service processes across five different contact centres. Using Pega Customer Service, Cox developed a unified workflow for customer support. Customers can start their interactions in one channel and move to another, and agents can pick up seamlessly in the middle of a resolution where the last agent left off.

?The Pega Customer Service desktop delivers a single view of the customer, with a dashboard that consolidates details from different processes such as equipment status, outstanding payments, and open work orders, which gives a much simpler and more consistent customer experience.

?And by [using AI to determine] which steps solve which problems most effectively, Pega is able to help Cox develop a next-best-action capability for problem resolution. All of this means that training can be much quicker, happening in days rather than months, with the ease of use significantly reducing churn.

?Because making better connections matters more than ever

?We’ve all learned the value of being able to connect with the people we love when we can’t be with them. And being connected to a store of entertainment when we’re stuck inside.

?But companies like Amazon and Netflix are raising people’s expectations of more personalised services at scale, whatever the channel. As CSPs move from telco to techco, these are the sort of experiences they will be competing against.

?They need to move beyond connectivity to create real connections. Pega will help them do this faster, easier and with less risk than anyone else.

?Telcos can connect the world better, when Pega makes them better connected.