The ‘deep use of AI’ can drive hyper personalization through carriers’ omni channel products
During a session at Google Cloud Next ’23, Ankur Jain, VP, Google Cloud for Telecom and Google Distributed Cloud, said that Google is using AI and data to help CSPs “reimagine customer experiences, network and IT operations and workforce productivity” by turning data into a “strategic asset and competitive advantage.”
“We are building CSP specific solutions and products,” he said during an event session. “We are also working closely with partners to ensure that there is an open ecosystem… whether that’s network equipment providers, OSS/BSS providers, network analytics providers, customer analytic platforms, system integrators and so on.”
Jain explained more specifically that Telecom Subscriber Insights allows CSPs to target customer acquisition, cross sell and upsell use cases, as well as increase customer retention. And when it comes to enterprise customers, Google is helping CSPs offer solutions “beyond connectivity,” such as enhancing productivity and collaboration by bundling Google workspace or reselling Google Cloud to help enterprise customers modernize their platforms.
In the same session, for instance, Hermeen Mehta, the chief digital officer at British Telecom (BT), explained how the “deep use of AI” is driving hyper personalization through the carrier’s omni channel products. “[Hyper personalization] is increasing… [customer] conversion, revenue and retention, [and] reducing churn,” she said, adding that the even “bigger impact,” though, is that it provides different levels of insights for sales staff. “For the same effort that [they] put in, we will tell [them] which customer, what product and at what time. This leads to a bigger conversation rate so their effort is better spent.”
Thanks to Google’s Telecom Subscriber Insights, Mehta continued, BT can better understand the personality of a customer, enabling the carrier to put that customer in touch with the “right” call center agent. “If you thought that it is only the Tinders of the world that do matchmaking, you’re wrong; telecom companies are the biggest matchmakers in the world,” she said. “That’s what we do first thing in the morning — when we send engineers out, we are looking at which engineer is the best to do which job; when a customer calls, we are matching them with the best call agent.”
Mehta did acknowledge, however, that as telecom companies encourage their customers to be unique and as they continue to tailor offerings, or even price points, to every customer, they are removing the ability to treat groups of people as whole market segments. “You’re creating a complexity and if you don’t solve for it, you’re never going to catch up,” she said. “This is the conundrum that most organizations are facing. We’ve made enough progress that we can come on stage and talk about it, but not enough progress that truly transforms the company. If you really want to do that, you have to… be all in.”
But, at the end of the day, Mehta was clear that the benefits of such innovation far outweigh the costs: “Embracing [AI] can cut literally months, if not years, off of transformation… We’d be fools not to jump on that horse and ride as fast as we can,” she said.
