Reader Forum: Hey telcos, what are you doing with all that information?

Telcos have access to a lot of consumer information, but continue to struggle with how to effectively deal with such knowledge

When you learn specific details about the people surrounding you, you can better understand their behavior, preferences and habits. And if you dedicate a bit of time, you can even predict how they will react in certain circumstances. When we ingest all of this information, we get a more comprehensive view of our environment and can adjust and adapt to ensure better interactions with those around us.
In a similar way, telcos – and other companies – are recognizing the benefits of analyzing and understanding their customers based on the data they can gather. The integration of customer information into traditional processes is giving telcos a 360-degree view into not only why decisions have failed in the past, but more importantly what a company can do to improve.
Strong competition among network operators, combined with strict governmental regulations around data privacy and the success that over-the-top players have had in recent years, has forced network operators to look for new revenue streams. At the same time, they must also look for ways employees can cut costs around internal operations, which means ensuring that all employees are making data-driven decisions.
While marketing tends to be the most widely cited success story around effectively targeting current and new customers, the telco industry is discovering that big data benefits extend to a plethora of other areas. Beyond just offering tailored promotions, telcos are now getting a completely new and much broader understanding of their network.

Customer satisfaction lowers operational costs

A prime example is the integration of customer service data and network data. Traditional reports showed network element’s alarms and the complaints received at the call center, which did not ultimately find the root cause of a problem: Meaning network issues continued to go undetected and customers continued to be dissatisfied. Now, by combining different data sources such as call center data logs, truck roll service and human resource data, customer service can effectively answer incoming complaints and determine which scenarios can be solved by phone vs. those requiring on site attention. This new approach in the telco industry is dramatically improving customer satisfaction and lowering operational costs, such as sending employees to a site.

Process optimization makes the world go ’round

Operational use cases are much like the red-headed stepchild. They’re not seen as being as “sexy” as tailored marketing campaigns that capture the imagination. Even still, there have been huge strides recently that are worth paying attention to.
Network operators are committed to improving the current network planning by adding customer data. This change is generating a new approach called value-based capacity planning, which allows operators to understand their network not only in terms of network elements, but also in terms of customers. As a result, they are able to identify the type of customer that is connected to each station and then determine the kind of upgrade to be provided to a station based on the customer’s revenue, contract, devices and more. Among other success stories, it is also possible to find the forecast capacity and demand by analyzing how subscribers are using network resources. This includes a deep view into OTT content as well as the usage of mobile services. Network operators are now able to know when, where and how subscribers are using the network and make data driven-decisions on the actual and future demand on the network.
And the success doesn’t stop there. The analysis of customer data leads to a clear understanding of what customers want as well as what they don’t want. With this in mind, network operators have found ways to create new revenue streams by developing new product offerings and creating different enterprise solutions for different sectors such as health care, retail and automotive.
It is clear that big data analytics is playing an important role within the telco industry and is on its way to becoming a key competitive advantage. Telcos that integrate customer data throughout their processes will better understand their customer base and have the potential to save money through improved operations and make money via new sources of revenue.
Editor’s Note: In an attempt to broaden our interaction with our readers we have created this Reader Forum for those with something meaningful to say to the wireless industry. We want to keep this as open as possible, but we maintain some editorial control to keep it free of commercials or attacks. Please send along submissions for this section to our editors at: [email protected].