By: Abhijit Vyas, Associate Consultant

Mark, a customer, received his phone bill and noticed that he was overcharged. He spent a long time waiting to connect to a customer care executive and was frustrated. We all have been in this situation: connecting to a customer care executive and getting an issue resolved is a tedious process. Now imagine the same situation and replace a human customer care executive with a digital assistant. Mark opened the service provider’s application, and a digital assistant helped raise a ticket for him in just 2-3 minutes. He also got a summary of the issue with the tracking ID to his email, and his issue was resolved quickly.

In this digital era, the hyper-competitive telecom industry is on a constant lookout for emerging technologies that can help them achieve three key goals:

1. Reduce customer churn
2. Increase ARPU (Average Revenue per User)
3. Provide convenience to customers while keeping costs in check

In order to meet these goals, telecom companies are adopting new technologies to offer better customer experiences. Chatbots is one such solution that has helped several telecom enterprises offer quick resolutions and better customer service while increasing employee efficiency and productivity.

Reigning in voluntary churn

Voluntary churn is the biggest challenge in telecom. The loss of customers has a direct effect on telecom business metrics. Therefore, if a telecom enterprise has to survive, retaining old customers is as important as gaining new ones. According to the industry expert Arthur Hughes, the average annual churn rate in the telecom sector can go rise to 67%¹.

Leveraging AI-based chatbots have helped telecom companies like Movistar reduce 30% of their customer service costs and increase the customer retention rate to over 80%.² A well-built chatbot can help telecom companies reduce churn rates, handle repetitive customer requests effectively, reduce wait times, redirect customer inquiries to the concerned department, send automated reminders to customers, and gather customer feedback.

Chatbots also opens up various avenues to increase cross-selling, up-selling, and display relevant add-on services, eventually increasing the ARPU. According to the Global Telecommunications Consumer Survey³, 56 % of customers use self-service to choose their plan, and 77 % use self-service to pay bills or recharge accounts. This means functional chatbots are no longer a “nice-to-have” tool. It is a necessity to deliver enriching customer experiences.

Benefits of chatbots for telecom customers and businesses

Digital assistants or chatbots offer a plethora of benefits. Some of them are user engagement, personalization, and cost savings.

Enhancing user engagement

Chatbots handle most of the customers’ repeat queries, mostly related to recharge plans, pricing, geographic coverage, basic setup procedure, etc. While the key objective of using a chatbot is to reduce manual efforts and answer customers’ queries faster, human intervention is not eliminated. In cases where human effort is required, chatbots seamlessly connect the customer to a customer care representative who can help further. This seamless handover offers excellent benefits, such as:

• Appropriate redirection to relevant departments
• Saves time by retrieving customer information before handover
• Reduces average support time
• Handles repetitive queries
• Offers 24×7 support

Chatbots also sends regular reminders and important updates to customers regarding their accounts, plans, and bills, keeping them informed.

Seamless personalization at scale

Getting on a call with a customer care executive might resolve specific issues, but the customer does not get the same executive all the time. A customer care executive may or may not have a context or the history of the customer’s issues, transactions, and choices. Chatbots help bridge this gap. By keeping a record of the customer’s past issues, chatbots bring in a sense of belongingness in the customers. The customers feel heard as they are communicating with a digital assistant that knows their past issues and inquiries.

Since chatbots interact with customers on a one-on-one basis, they can provide personalized responses and suggest recommendations based on individual preferences. With the help of chatbots, companies can provide personalized data, which enables customers to view their usage, expenses, and savings made for any time range.

Cost savings

As per Juniper Networks research, chatbots are estimated to cost savings of over $8 billion annually by 2022, up from $20 million in 2017⁴. Artificial intelligence enables chatbots to handle multiple customers simultaneously. This helps reduce manual labor, the cost of employing frontline executives, and streamlines marketing spending – all of which ultimately result in significant cost savings.

Chatbots- A game-changer

Chatbots offer a plethora of benefits to telecom companies. While customers who love technology can adapt to chatbots easily, traditional customers who are not tech-savvy might prefer human assistance. Telecom companies must find innovative ways to attract less tech-savvy customers to embrace new technologies. The value of technology solutions must be clearly explained to the customers. The customer must be aware of the value they can benefit from if they adapt to the new solution. If used right, chatbots can be a real game-changer.

Telco companies must also partner with the right technology partner who can analyze business readiness and offer customized solutions. Among other things, LTIMindtree has also created an enterprise-level chatbot platform: Mindflow. It can integrate with different NLP engines and create chatbots for different businesses for various purposes, including telecom.

Reference links:

1. Churn reduction in the telecom industry by Arthur Hughes http://www.dbmarketing.com/telecom/churnreduction.html
2. https://www.aivo.co/blog/chatbots-in-telecom
3. https://www.ibm.com/downloads/cas/RBOWBADG
4. https://www.juniperresearch.com/researchstore/devices-technology/chatbots-trends-research-report/nonharvest/vendor-opportunities-market-forecasts-lite?utm_source=juniperpr&utm_campaign=chatbots2017pr1&utm_medium=email