For years, exceptional customer experiences have been central to the success of businesses in every industry. In fact, Forrester reports that customer experience has become the ultimate priority for around 75% of global businesses.
As consumer expectations evolve, staying one step ahead of the competition requires business leaders to invest in cutting-edge technologies and innovations. In the telecoms landscape, this has led to significant disruptions, fueled by the consolidation of applications and toolkits, the rise of new AI algorithms, and the introduction of new strategies to boost customer engagement.
Here, we’ll examine some of the most significant transformations in the telecom sector, driving enhanced productivity, efficiency, and boosted customer experiences for business leaders.
1. Bridging the Gaps: Increased Integration
To deliver excellent experiences to customers, companies need to align their processes, data, and teams in a unified environment. UCaaS (Unified Communications as a Service), and CCaaS (Contact Center as a Service) platforms can no longer be disconnected. Bridging the gaps between these solutions is the key to enabling business-wide collaboration and building a customer-centric culture.
When UCaaS and contact center solutions are connected, using solutions like CallTower’s technology, customer-facing teams can more effectively source guidance and insights from back-office staff members and subject matter experts, leading to quicker issue resolution times, and enhanced problem solving.
However, to optimize productivity, and truly deliver next-level customer service, companies need to connect more than just their UCaaS and CCaaS stacks.
They need an all-in-one environment for all of their data, linking their telecommunications tools to CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tools for access to personalized customer data, workforce management systems for resource optimization, and more. End-to-end connections between all relevant technology systems turbocharge productivity and pave the way for better customer service.
2. Omnichannel Service: Now a Priority
Customers worldwide have grown accustomed to variety and flexibility when reaching out to customer support and sales teams. They want to be able to connect with businesses on their preferred channel, from SMS and voice to video and online chat. More importantly, they want the experience to be consistent, regardless of which channel they choose.
Around 90% of customers expect consistent experiences across all channels. This means companies need to ensure the various channels they use for communication are aligned, and that team members can share contextual information throughout the customer journey.
This has led to a rise in omnichannel contact center platforms, like CallTower’s platform, that seamlessly link telecom solutions with video conferencing, messaging tools, and even collaboration apps. It has also driven a demand for advanced automation systems, that can instantly transfer data to customer service representatives, track customer journeys, and monitor service quality, across all channels.
3. Advanced Customer Management Solutions
As businesses scale and grow, often on a global level, they need a way to manage calls and conversations in a new, omnichannel landscape. Communications vendors are therefore building on their technologies, to help streamline operations.
Artificial intelligence, automation, and other advanced technologies are revolutionizing call and conversation management. Intelligent call routing solutions are becoming increasingly popular, ensuring businesses can direct each customer towards the most appropriate department or agent, reducing the risk of call abandonment and transfers. This is particularly crucial for global companies, that need to route customers to “local” agents.
Advanced IVR (Interactive Voice Response) systems give customers more control over their service journey, while also simultaneously allowing them to complete certain tasks without an agent’s input, such as checking billing information.
Additionally, enhanced analytical systems built into omnichannel customer service environments are providing businesses with more data they can use to optimize their operations. Dashboards, real-time monitoring systems, and customizable reporting tools ensure businesses can maintain a holistic view of their customer service strategy and evolve over time.
4. Evolutions in Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence is emerging as a valuable solution in virtually every part of the communications and customer experience landscape. Beyond powering more advanced routing capabilities, analytical tools, and IVR systems, AI solutions are transforming the performance of CX teams.
Generative AI, such as Microsoft’s Copilot solution, or the AI assistant built into Cisco Webex can help team members create engaging content for sales and customer service purposes, and assist them in following up with customers about their specific needs.
Drawing insights from CRM systems and other data resources, AI tools can help to hyper-personalize each customer experience, leading to greater loyalty and conversions. In fact, improving the hyper-personalization of customer experience was cited as a top priority for 42% of decision makers.
AI solutions can even enhance team productivity in various ways, translating and transcribing messages on autopilot, offering insights into customer sentiment throughout their purchasing journey, and providing real-time coaching and assistance.
5. Security and Privacy: A Growing Focus Area
Finally, as the telecom and customer experience landscape continues to evolve, the focus on security, privacy and compliance is growing. While protecting customer and business data has always been crucial for businesses, increasingly strict regulations are placing new pressures on organizations.
This is particularly true as AI makes its way into the contact center and business landscape, presenting new challenges to overcome. While customers are largely willing to share personal data with companies if it can improve their customer experience, they want guarantees that this data will be protected. This means telecom companies, UCaaS, and CCaaS providers are implementing stronger measures to protect the compliance of organizations.
End-to-end encryption for all conversations, on every channel, robust access controls for users, and even advanced authentication methods, like biometric voice printing are becoming more commonplace. Additionally, end-to-end recording solutions that can capture data from every interaction for compliance purposes are emerging as a must-have for organizations.
The Customer-Centric Telecom Revolution
The telecom and wider communications industry has always evolved at a rapid pace, based on emerging technologies and changing customer priorities. Now, however, we’re experiencing a significant shift in the market, with a focus on customer-centric technology.
With technology consolidation, advanced AI algorithms, and enhanced solutions for data privacy and security enabled by vendors like CallTower, business leaders can stay one step ahead of customer demands.
