Although customer-facing teams in marketing and sales have been quicker to adopt AI and automation than network operations teams, there is a growing understanding in telecoms that delivering a good customer experience must start with the network. Achieving this is easier said than done, since getting a full view of an individual customer’s experience of the network depends on bringing together data from potentially hundreds of systems, and then making sense of it. Figuring which metrics are most representative of a customer’s experience and how to combine and present them in an easy-to-understand way for network operations and customer-facing teams is one of the biggest challenges operators are grappling with today. However, it is well worth it – our research into the value of A3 (AI, analytics and automation) for telcos shows that improvement to top level customer experience from using A3 for network service assurance is worth US$27 million annually for the average sized telco.
How O2 is using AI to improve customer experience
O2 introduced a single data driven customer experience metric called NCX (network customer experience). By using machine learning techniques to evaluate a customer’s perception of network quality, O2 were able to impact three key areas:
- Network operations: NCX supports O2 in network fault management and network optimisation to better invest its resources into improved fault detection, faster root-cause identification, smarter dispatch of engineers into the field.
- Network planning and investment efficiency: O2, like its peers, is under pressure to constrain its capex. NCX allows the organisation to take a nuanced view of CX across different parts of the network and determine which should receive investment for largest CX improvement ROI.
- Targeted marketing and CX management: The granular information NCX provides about individual customers allows O2 take a more tailored approach to communication. Shift from reactive to proactive has helped create a ‘stickier’ network, increase customer retention and improve upsell opportunities.
Ultimately, implementing a network-driven approach to customer experience management can feed into telcos’ customer-facing channels, enabling them to implement a successful omnichannel strategy.
See our in-depth research on A3 in customer experience
- Full O2 UK case study
- Elisa Automate: Growing value with sisu
- The value of analytics, automation and AI for telcos – Part 1: The telco A3 application map
- A3 for telcos – Part 2: Mapping the financial value