The past decade has seen the telecom industry evolve – both in terms of technology and business. With emerging technologies such as 5G and SD-WAN, the telecom industry is poised for greater transformation in the coming decade. With the competition getting fierce and more objective with each passing day, customer experience and disruptive technology are gaining a lot of importance for telecom giants. Experts from the telecom industry point out significant trends that predict a comprehensive transformation for telecom in future. In our blogpost today, we will explore the top six trends that experts are talking about and what it means for the telecom industry today.

Business Model Transformation

• With digital transformation making waves of change in every industry across the globe, the telecom players are feeling the need for a much more comprehensive changeover vis-à-vis simple technological advancement.
• Business model transformation is a more connected approach to digital transformation. Telecom companies facing aggressive competition from niche and start up players are looking to adopt a holistic approach towards digital transformation.
• A transformative strategy that encompasses every aspect of the telecom business and keeps a focus on the end consumer.
• This calls for a strategic cultural shift in business and digital transformation with an objective analysis of impact on customer experience.
• Telecom service providers need to expand their business model portfolio to succeed in this dynamic business environment.

Disruptive Technologies will transform Customer Experience

• Experts opine that a combination of disruptive technologies such as IoT, Block chain and Artificial Intelligence (AI) can change the way a customer accesses telecom services.
• In time, a customer may need not commit themselves to any one telecom service provider and use their digital identity to commoditize the core service of telecom service providers – connectivity.
• This increases the significance of creating a compelling customer experience more than ever before.
• Customer loyalty will begin to depend on the exceptional experiences that telecom service providers can offer their customers.
• This will require a structural change in telecom businesses and use of emerging technology with grow manifold.

Unprecedented growth of the public cloud

• The past few years have shown a rise in popularity of the public cloud because of the economy and scalability it offers. The public cloud has reduced the dependency of telecom on legacy infrastructures built for specific use cases.
• The public cloud is stationed for an unprecedented growth in popularity and revenue in the immediate future. This is mainly owing to the adoption of public cloud in telecom industry.
• The public cloud can expedite time to market for telecom service providers. The cloud can affordably scale infrastructure as needed, in a short time.
• This offers telecom companies a chance to expand their business regions without increasing capital expenditure and guaranteed quick roll outs of services as needed.
• The applicability of 5G services is increasing each day and in the future telecom service providers see their partners running more applications on 5G than ever before.
• The public cloud plays an important role in helping telecom companies cater to such demand. Now, telecom service providers can use cloud economics to test new offerings at a low cost.

Value Added Services

• For telecom service providers, greater connectivity amongst devices is a great opportunity to expand their service portfolio to offer value added services.
• Customers are looking to the telecom industry for services over and above connectivity.
• With IoT, billions of devices across the globe are connected. What is needed, are new digital models of service and partnerships that enable telecom service providers to create new value added services for their customers.
• Leveraging the IoT connectivity with strategic collaborations can change the competitive arena for the telecom industry in the near future.

End to end Customer Experience

• Customer experience is no longer limited to the give and take of services for the telecom companies of today.
• Telecom companies must now map the customer journey and look at the end to end customer experience as a series of interactions between the company and the customer.
• Telecom service providers that identify the micro experiences that most impact a customer experience can ensure a seamless and personalized customer experience – an important aspect in today’s dynamic competition.
• Business models in the telecom industry will be remodeled with a customer centric view wherein organizational silos will be identified and transformed to maintain laser like focus on the customer.

Payments

• One of the key interactions that customers in the telecom industry have with service providers is payments. A hassle free payment experience creates a strong impact on customer loyalty
• Telecom service providers are adopting more and more methods of payment for the convenience of the customer.
• In a customer focused approach to payments it is essential that telecom companies create a seamless payment experience that allows the customer to choose the mode and process of payment.
• Payment as a customer experience goes above and beyond accepting an amount of money. It includes smooth redressal of grievances, refunds for unsatisfactory service and response to inquiries.

Aarav Solutions is a global product engineering and IT consulting services provider. Our clientele comes from a broad array of industries – Telecommunications, Banking & Finance, Government, Power and Utilities among various other B2B segments. Our goal is to empower businesses in their quest for digital transformation with our experience, innovation and next generation technology.