Blog Post

If you’re a Cisco customer, chances are you’ve used MediaSense. This built-in call recorder came as part of Cisco products to capture your phone conversations.

MediaSense is nearing the end of its days. Cisco stopped selling the call recorder back in 2017 and this year will be formally ending its support for both 10.x and 11.x versions.

I’ve been relying on MediaSense, what should I do?

The official deadline for the end of MediaSense is October 31st 2020. If you’ve been relying on it to record your calls, the time is now to look for a new solution. And we’re here to help. Dubber joined Cisco in 2019 to provide Unified Call Recording and voice AI services for their Webex Calling service and we now support their UCM-C, HCS, and CUCM services.

We offer pain-free migration for all of your MediaSense recordings to our cloud platform, and the chance to upgrade to the Dubber Voice Intelligence Cloud, with no need to invest in any new equipment. We record directly from the Cisco network so all calls are recorded, whether they happen on a fixed line, mobile device, or IP connection. Our services are available on a subscription model so there is no long-term commitment required.

How does Dubber compare to MediaSense?

Plus:

• By upgrading to the Dubber Voice Intelligence Cloud every call is fully transcribed with sentiment analysis
• Customer alerts based on call content
• Compatible with Webex Calling, UCM-C, HCS, and CUCM services

The Dubber platform is efficient and cost effective: with an open API for easy provisioning and integration with other business tools such as Tableau. We have ready-to-use Google Data Studio templates, and will soon be launching a dedicated Salesforce app. Our secure and scalable cloud platform offers long-term, unlimited storage that can help with regulatory compliance – with no restrictions on the amount of minutes recorded or stored.

Once you record your calls with Dubber, you get access to our Voice Intelligence Cloud – fully transcribing every single call and enriching call transcripts with detailed information about caller sentiment and tone – even identifying seven different emotions. This data opens up the potential for businesses to gain valuable insights from their voice data, search for calls by keyword, and automate processes based on what was said during a phone call.

Try out Dubber call recording and voice AI for free

To ease the transition to the cloud, we are offering free recording migration to all MediaSense users as well as free call recording for the first 90 days. Make sure you don’t lose out on the critical function of recording your calls and contact Dubber to access the free offer.

We offer three plans to suit your call recording requirements, along with increased support services. You can stack as many licenses as you need, there are no minimums required. Each license comes with unlimited recording minutes, and unlimited storage – making it perfect for compliance with industry regulations.

Our conversations are rich with information; but this valuable voice data is lost as soon as the call ends, or is trapped within proprietary call recording solutions. Voice is the largest untapped data source for most businesses, but if it is siloed its true value is lost. This is why we have introduced Data Exporter. This easy-to-use feature unlocks the voice data of a business and allows companies to truly unify their data to create a single source of truth.

When businesses export voice data and combine this with other internal data sources, they have the potential to tap into valuable insights. This can help to: develop dashboards to visualise contact centre agent performance, monitor and report on customer experience, deliver compliance reporting, access conversational content for investigations and customer remediation, enrich CRM data, and automate workflows. This kind of data cannot be extracted from chatbots or email and so is a valuable source of business intelligence.

What can businesses do with exported voice data?

Whether you’re a huge enterprise with a team of data scientists at your disposal, or you’re a small business owner who’s more comfortable with an Excel spreadsheet, data is key to making business decisions. We give you complete ownership of the data you collect from your calls, allowing you to use it in the way that best suits your business needs.

When you export data from Dubber, you are able to view call information, including sentiment ratings, tone and emotion. This kind of data can give a real insight into customer satisfaction and provide businesses with a better understanding of how customer conversations unfold.

You can unify exported voice data with data from other areas of the business, allowing for greater visibility. This is key to making your data work for you: with no more siloing of information, you get a 360º view of business trends and can more easily spot patterns.

Businesses can use contact centre analytics tools to compare data such as call volume, IVR path, and user numbers to analyse business patterns. Data can be exported to visualisation tools such as Tableau – or to tools that users are familiar with, such as Excel.

Improve customer satisfaction

Improving customer satisfaction and net promoter score is a key driver for businesses. By continually monitoring customer satisfaction using sentiment data, businesses can work to ensure satisfaction throughout sales, service, and complaints processes. Companies can use the knowledge gained from this analysis to raise customer satisfaction levels and increase the customer retention. Using Dubber’s Voice Intelligence Cloud, businesses can display sentiment and tone analysis. When viewed alongside call themes they can see how sentiment and tone changed over time.

Improve dispute resolution

Good complaint handling reduces overall operational costs. Businesses can analyse their exported voice data to ask questions of their complaints process. This data can show if complaints have been dealt with fairly and correctly by the customer service team, and whether anything could have been done differently. Customer service teams can identify common barriers to dispute resolution, alongside the root cause of complaints. This gives businesses the opportunity to address underlying issues and ultimately reduce incoming call volumes.

Understand first contact resolution

First contact resolution (FCR) provides an overview of customer resolution across various call types and shows the related sentiment and tone. FCR rates are determined by analysing spoken content within calls to find language relating to repeat contact such as ‘third time of calling’ or ‘last time I spoke with…’. When this is exported for analysis alongside CRM data and PBX records that show multiple interactions with the same users, businesses can determine the FCR rates for their calls.

Unresolved calls also provide an opportunity for deeper analysis around root cause and the frequency with which these escalate to negative call outcomes. Analysis of these calls can provide training insights.

Inform day-to-day business decisions

As well as using voice data to look at the big picture, businesses can also use it to inform everyday operations. Customer teams can export sentiment data to CRMs to inform a more personalised approach to customer interactions. Customers who are shown to be frequently exhibiting emotions such as fear or anger could receive a different approach to those who frequently show positive emotions on calls. Calls with negative sentiment can be used as a training tool for contact centre operators to learn how to alleviate negative emotions.

Particularly at this time when many businesses are operating with a remote workforce, management may want to use sentiment analysis to check on employees dealing with an increased number of calls with negative sentiment ratings.

Not a data scientist? No worries

Not everyone has the time or resources to undertake huge data science projects using expensive software. If you’re new to data science, we have you covered with our own set of templates for Google Data Studio. They will help you take your first steps into the world of analytics and business intelligence.

Available as standard for all Dubber AI plans

All businesses with Dubber AI plans will be able to use the Dubber API to export recording data up to a range of 31 days. Exports are presented as a csv spreadsheet where each row represents one recording, and include voice AI information. This allows data from recorded calls to be extracted in bulk. The new feature is included as standard through the API.

We’re very excited today to be announcing general availability of Dubber Unified Call Recording and voice data intelligence on Telstra’s TIPT, Liberate and SIP services in Australia.

Telstra TIPT, Liberate and SIP have stood out as some of the most reliable and efficient ways to connect with customers. Now Government and Enterprise can double the value of those connections by putting the content in every call to work – improving customer experience, mitigating risks, and improving productivity.

For the first time, companies in Australia can easily purchase cloud based call recording across any connected device – including mobile, for their entire business, with no expensive hardware costs, software to install or costly storage to manage.

Legacy Enterprise call recording has traditionally been limited to call centre environments, doesn’t scale easily and only captures a small number of the calls made. These limits made it difficult for Enterprises in regulated industries to comply; critical activities such as customer sentiment reporting and knowing your customer couldn’t occur in a timely way; and integration with applications and Big Data were restricted. Covid-19 further exposed its weaknesses as businesses missed capturing and converting calls from mobile devices and a dispersed workforce.

Now, with Dubber’s infinitely scalable cloud platform and Voice Intelligence Cloud being integrated into Telstra’s TIPT and Liberate products, companies can turn on call recording on demand, for any user. Flexible plans mean they can scale-up or down easily, and it works for sole traders, SMBs and the largest of Government and Enterprises.

This opens up whole new opportunities for businesses to understand voice data and gain valuable insights into their business. Want to understand call sentiment for every branch location in a bank, or franchisee outlet? That can easily be done using Dubber’s in-built sentiment analysis tools. Want to have a transcript of important customer calls integrated into Salesforce? Easily done as a standard part of Dubber’s service. Running a medium sized financial planning firm and need to record landline and mobile customer advice calls for ASIC record keeping and compliance purposes? We’ve got you covered.

Once a company starts deploying “whole of business” call recording, they can also take advantage of valuable insights from their voice data using advanced artificial intelligence and speech analytics tools. Want to trigger notifications every time a competitor is mentioned in a voice call inside the business? How about triggering a direct mail campaign offer to a bank customer every time a customer mentions “credit card” on a voice call? All of this is possible and much more when businesses are able to use the information inside their company from voice data.

And there are great opportunities for Telstra channel partners too. We believe that Dubber cloud call recording services can drive significant new demand for TIPT, Liberate and SIP services. Liberate in particular, is the first mobile service in the country that will have network layer, integrated call recording available.

We call this the “democratisation” of call recording for businesses and individual users. It will completely change the call recording industry in the months and years ahead.

Now more than ever, businesses are moving towards agile workforces that aren’t tied to a location or device. Infrastructure and operations leaders are looking to create perimeterless workplaces that enhance operations while maintaining high security standards.

As we have seen over recent weeks, digital business requirements have accelerated the adoption of cloud services in order to support remote workers. Cisco’s video-conferencing Webex service registered a record 324 million attendees in March, with usage more than tripling in the APAC region. With workers switching from office PCs, to laptops in their home office, to smartphones or tablets in their living rooms, businesses need to ensure that they can do their job, no matter the device. This changing work style is described as a perimeterless workplace.

Mobile access to business tools require appropriate security precautions to ensure that access to information is controlled. With users transitioning between devices, networks, and applications, it can be difficult to maintain a seamless experience. By migrating to the cloud, organisations can enable these new ways of working without the need for local networks or VPNs and still maintain security standards. The adoption of cloud services allows users to be productive across a range of devices.

Removing perimeters with the cloud

Dubber cloud call recording and voice AI has been designed with remote work in mind from the very beginning. We connect to service providers directly through their networks: capturing calls directly from the source and securely storing them in the cloud, with no need for any on-premise equipment. With no up-front investment required, companies can access our call recording and voice AI services on an affordable monthly subscription. Businesses of all sizes can connect to our services through their telecommunications provider, with no minimums to prohibit smaller firms or self-employed workers. With global data centres, recorded calls are protected by the latest cloud security protocols while maintaining data sovereignty. Not only can calls be captured across fixed-lines and mobiles, with the appropriate permissions they can be securely accessed from any device or location.

Access and security permissions

In order to ensure information security, access management must be put in place for remote workers. Traditionally, access to data may have been restricted to internal networks within offices or corporate-owned devices. Within a perimeterless workplace, access is granted to specific users through authentication, authorisation, and single sign-on.

Within the Dubber platform, permissions settings and team structures are put in place to restrict access to recorded call content. Depending on the permissions status of the user, they may be able to listen to no call content, only their own calls, or the calls of their team. You can read more about our security practices on our security page.

Application integrations

Users working across devices and locations expect a seamless experience. They want to be able to use the same applications wherever they are working. This is why we made the Dubber portal available to use as a mobile app, desktop app, or through a web browser. Our open API also allows for integration with existing business tools, allowing recorded content to be accessible from applications that users already feel comfortable with. Integrations with CRM systems enable organisations to create detailed customer profiles with recorded calls and their transcripts stored alongside other information.

For more information on how our cloud services can be implemented across a remote workforce, talk to one of our team today.

Unifying your business communications is more important than ever before. With the COVID-19 pandemic disrupting working practices, and telecommunications services providers such as Telstra beginning to disconnect older technologies such as ISDN services in Australia, many businesses may be thinking about migrating to a scalable unified communications solution in order to remain connected.

It is expected that cloud communication solutions will replace services such as ISDN, offering significant savings and flexibility for businesses. Voice services will be easier to manage remotely, and the same communications can be deployed across multiple locations for greater integration and resilience. Connecting through the cloud, rather than physical phone lines, frees employees to work remotely. Cloud solutions also allow for omnichannel communications, which are particularly important for businesses as customers increasingly expect to be able to contact companies by a variety of methods.

What is ISDN and why is it being shut down?

The first telephone networks, built in the 19th century, were made of copper phone lines that sent voice data. This technology makes up the public switched telephone network (PSTN), which has been used ever since. The integrated services digital network (ISDN) uses these copper wires to digitally transmit voice and data.

In Australia, the National Broadband Network (nbn™) is superseding older technology such as ISDN. The nbn™ is a nationwide project funded by the Federal Government. The project aims to provide every home and business with fast and reliable internet with the intention that any new telephone networks will now be IP (internet protocol) based. While this means that traditional devices that do not support IP services will not be compatible, there are many benefits to embracing this new technology. Similar initiatives are taking place around the world.

Will my business need to change phone system, and what are the options?

Businesses with ISDN phone systems will need to make some changes, but these needn’t be drastic. In fact, the shutdown can be seen as an opportunity to upgrade organisational communications and save money at the same time. A transition to next-generation communications has the potential to increase flexibility as well as introduce greater functionality.

Many existing phone systems are compatible with SIP (session initiation protocol) solutions, which also allow organisations to add lines as required without the need for additional infrastructure. SIP channels, sometimes called SIP trunking, are easy to set up: the only requirement is a reliable internet connection with the bandwidth to support voice services, creating a virtual telephone line. A hosted IP phone system is a commitment-free alternative to an on-premise phone system. These solutions use an internet connection to provide the usual functionality of a phone system, without the maintenance charges associated with an on-premise system.

VoIP (voice over internet protocol) systems are hosted in the cloud, and are easy to install and maintain as they don’t require physical hardware. These systems use the internet to carry voice data, without on-premise equipment. VoIP doesn’t even require physical phones: softphones can transform a computer into a phone using software.

Future proof your business

While moving your communications to an entirely new solution may sound daunting, the benefits well outweigh any short term (and mild) inconvenience. Modern voice technology like SIP and VoIP can offer huge savings, as well as greater flexibility, scalability, portability, and security. Soft clients on devices enable workers to take all the capabilities of the office with them, wherever they go. Where traditional phone lines required installation in new locations, with IP-based services telephone lines can be easily added and removed, and can be of a higher quality. This future-proofs businesses for any growth, as handsets and portable devices can be connected instantly.

VoIP systems enable mobility through single number reach, allowing users to be reached on one number across multiple devices. VoIP can also incorporate a range of communication methods, such as video conferencing, email, and instant messaging into one solution. This consolidation of communication is referred to as unified communications (UC). Unified communications can bring cost savings and facilitate increased productivity, with users able to work from any location with an internet connection.

VoIP also provides greater potential for business continuity, as it’s not tied to any on-premise hardware. Calls can be diverted easily between locations in case sites are unreachable. UC that is completely hosted in the cloud is referred to as unified communications as a service (UCaaS). A whole range of communication and collaboration applications and services can be deployed through the cloud, and consolidating these services can often simplify billing into a fixed package; making costs more predictable.

To find out more about the kinds of services we offer that can be integrated into a UCaaS solution, get in touch with a member of our team today.

Guest blog written by Mikka Hendra

The current global challenges put a spotlight on IT and IT services – like cloud, Unified Communications, Call Recording, anything and everything surrounding the dramatic movement of staff to home working environments.

While our team is so grateful to be healthy and still able to work, their new challenges have become convincing the kids not to use up the household WiFi downloads for TikTok and Tiger King and remembering they only dressed their upper half for Webex Calls!

Dubber continues to work around the clock to accelerate the global movement to #WorkingFromHome. However despite this global movement, our staff found themselves struggling with basic physical movement besides moving themselves to the fridge and back, while WFH.

The Management team saw an opportunity to optimise the way we worked in these new times and decided to create the Dubber Wellness Hub | Supporting physical distancing, social connection + positive WFH lifestyles.

The Hub was built and rolled out to our workforce as a social health and wellness Hub providing our team with a means for connection, mental health support and resources, general ISO tips, tricks and ideas during physical distancing for COVID-19.

This initiative saw the creation of the Dubber Wellness schedule which includes daily Webex chats by the “office e-water cooler”, online fortnightly health coach wellness coach tips with Jessica Duchesne, UberEats vouchers for a fortnightly team lunch via video, team meditation facilitated by “conscious comedian” Jeremy Carne and after checking on the corporate insurance policy, guided yoga and fitness classes by yours truly.

Along with wellness, we started a weekly themed ‘Bad Fashion Fridays’ competition, dressed in our fashion fails for the day’s video conference meetings. The team look forward to ending the week with some humour at their co-workers expense, before recapping on our Friday Happy Hour chat.

With a new focus on nurturing our teams mental and physical health from a distance, we feel our workforce is becoming closer and more productive than ever and encourage any workplaces still able to work, to rethink how your team connects during this time.

Advances in technology have facilitated a whole host of business developments, increasing efficiency and driving productivity across a variety of industries. But the benefits of such technological improvements are mostly confined to large enterprises who are able to invest in new solutions. Often small businesses face insurmountable barriers to adopting new technology, such as lack of resources, difficulty or reluctance to move away from legacy solutions, and worries about maintaining business continuity.

Future-proofing with the cloud

For service providers and value-added resellers (VARs), the small and medium business (SMB) market can be easy to neglect when faced with obstacles that prevent them from adopting new technology. However, the cloud is providing solutions that can help service providers and VARs to access this market and open up a whole new range of customers. The flexibility and accessibility of cloud solutions break down the obstacles that previously prevented small businesses from adopting new technology. Employees have grown accustomed to using the cloud in everyday life and they now expect to at work, so a move to the cloud is no longer such a daunting prospect.

Resources

Before the advent of the cloud, adopting new technology required not just a financial investment but allocation of other resources including time, trained staff, and physical space. Moving to a new solution meant investing in new hardware and software, along with installation. Deploying new technology often requires a lengthy installation process, along with specially trained staff, ongoing maintenance, and the physical space required to store any hardware such as servers.

Cloud software as a service (SaaS) solutions break down these barriers, allowing service providers and VARs to offer products and services on tailored monthly subscription plans that require no upfront investment from SMBs. Even traditional software companies like Microsoft now offer packages such as their Office product suite as SaaS. Where customers would once have bought a CD to install each new version on their computer, cloud versions can apply updates automatically and are transferable between devices. Cloud solutions require no hardware, meaning no need for specially trained staff, maintenance or storage space. Businesses can also start using the services immediately with no delays created by installation processes.

Legacy solutions

Although small businesses are known for their agility, when it comes to adopting new technology they may be unwilling to move to a different service if they have previously invested heavily in a legacy solution. Service providers and VARs could offer a compromise with a solution that enhances what they already have, without requiring a complete overhaul.

Business continuity

There are often worries about business continuity when considering adopting new technology. Cloud solutions often facilitate a smooth transition, with much shorter implementation periods and open APIs allowing integration with existing systems.

Dubber and the cloud

Dubber call recording and voice AI are great examples of how the cloud can help small businesses adopt new technology. Our services are all available on a monthly subscription, with no upfront investment, hardware, or trained staff required. We connect directly to the network to capture voice data, so businesses do not need to install any equipment on premise or worry about maintenance or storage space. We understand that businesses may not want to part with expensive legacy equipment and so we also work with businesses who want to keep their on-premise solutions, extracting the voice data for transcription and analytics. Our open API allows companies to integrate call data into their existing systems, ensuring business processes continue to run smoothly.

The fifth, and final, instalment of our Fourth Industrial Revolution series explores what telecommunication service providers need to do in order to provide for the new digital workforce. Part one of the series gave an overview of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, part two looked at intuitive networks and how 5G and cloud technology fit into developments in the telecommunications industry, part three examined the growing importance of diversity in telecommunications product offerings, and part four examined the evolving expectations of customers.

The digital workforce is a manifestation of automated solutions, in various stages of development, that are currently driving productivity in the workforce. Integrations that share data across business tools are making workers and business processes more efficient, allowing employees to focus on more valuable activities. Over the next few years, enterprises will be increasingly deploying efficiency solutions driven by automation in order to improve the quality and productivity of their operational, back office, and customer service processes. Telecommunication service providers need to ensure they are meeting the expectations of modern businesses with their offerings, or they may be faced with increased risk of customer churn.

The connected workforce

Connectivity is steadily increasing due to innovation within the telecommunications industry, such as fixed-mobile convergence (FMC). You can read more about FMC in our white paper. However, digital players are making their way into the marketplace and disrupting the industry with rapid digital innovation. These agile disruptors are unpredictable and aren’t restricted by the legacy infrastructure and long development cycles that can hold traditional telecommunication service providers back from innovation. Digital services can often offer more opportunities for integration with existing systems, as well as better connectivity. Telecommunications service providers will need to innovate to compete with these digital players.

Alternative innovation

Innovation in the telecommunication industry has traditionally been characterised by staged developments that span multiple years. In order to compete with digital players and develop new products and services that can be deployed at scale, providers will need to review their innovation strategies. The World Economic Forum has discussed a recent trend towards innovation approaches that focus on collaboration, and the positive impact on growth that this achieves. Gone are the days of focusing on the ownership rights to intellectual property: the main focus in the future should be putting customers first. This is vital to obtaining a share of the market. These kinds of open innovation models allow external parties to contribute to the development of products and services, often achieving development at a scale that goes beyond the sum of its parts. Telecommunications companies have successfully nurtured a “sandbox” innovation approach that allows their research and development teams to work autonomously: giving them greater freedom for innovation.

Harnessing data

Data is increasingly being used to solve business problems and increase productivity within organisations. According to a 2019 report¹, data science expertise is now a highly sought-after skill. Telecommunications service providers have a key role to fill in harnessing the vast amounts of conversational data held within our communications. With access to this valuable information, data scientists will be able to analyse and identify data trends, as well as problems that can be solved, through artificial intelligence.

Our Fourth Industrial Revolution series has shown that the telecommunications industry has a key role to play in shaping the way we communicate, collaborate, and consume. With developments in networks and product offerings, service providers can capitalise on the evolving expectations of customers and stay ahead of the competition. New methods of innovation can help them to compete with digital players, and their customer bases can provide them with the data they need to provide personalised offerings that will reduce churn and help with customer acquisition.

¹Firebrand, Vitamin T & Aquent (2019) Transformation of the Digital Workforce: 2019 Report. Australia.

Our cloud call recording is now available for immediate signup for all customers on the Sprint^® Smart UC service. With 53.9 million connections, that’s a huge number of users who can start to reap the benefits of recording their calls in the cloud.

The cloud-based unified communications (UC) service eliminates the need for traditional on-premise equipment and capital expenditure for business customers and so is a natural fit for our software as a service (SaaS) products. Their affordable unified communications as a service (UCaaS) solution allows users to combine their business phones and collaboration apps in one UC service. The solution helps to improve productivity by amalgamating carrier grade voice services with high definition video, desktop sharing, instant messaging and email.

Just as our cloud call recording is designed with small businesses in mind, Sprint^® Smart also offers a service that is perfect for small and medium enterprises. As a cloud service, the need for upfront investment in on-premise hardware provides flexibility for businesses. Users can be added and removed on a monthly basis, through an easy-to-use online portal, and our call recording services can be added and adjusted in the same way.

Dubber call recording, as standard

With our cloud call recording available as a standard value-added business feature for all Smart UC customers, our CEO Steve McGovern commented: ‘We are very proud to be working with Sprint, a globally recognised leader in the telecommunications industry.” You can read more from Steve in the full ASX announcement below.

To find out how to add value to your business with call recording, speak to a member of our team today.

The fourth instalment of our Fourth Industrial Revolution series explores the evolving expectations of customers and how digital experiences will change over time. Part one of the series introduced the Fourth Industrial Revolution, part two examined intuitive networks and the future of cloud and 5G technology within the telecommunications industry, and part three investigated how telecommunications service providers will need to diversify their offerings in order to stand out from the competition.

Customer expectations have evolved alongside the development of technology, as businesses digitally enhance the customer experience. The high quality service and convenience afforded by technology is now seen as standard by consumers, who are demanding personalised services on demand. They are also expecting a seamless experience across channels, with hassle-free payment and deployment options.

Customer expectations within telecommunications

The telecommunications industry is plagued by customer churn and the costs associated with acquiring new customers. Encouraging customer loyalty is a great way to increase revenue, so telecommunications service providers will need to look for new and innovative ways to retain customers. This may require service providers to reassessing the expectations of their customers and developing digital tools in order to better support the customer journey at every stage and enhance their overall experience.

Telecommunications service providers are well placed to deliver personalised products and services to their users chiefly due to the amount of data they have. New technologies will enable companies to deliver these at scales previously impossible or unimaginable. Smart algorithms will be able to analyse customer data in real time to deliver personalised products and services to entire customer bases at once. We are already seeing this customisation with TV streaming services that learn from user behaviour. In the future, this personalisation will be automatically created using artificial intelligence, and a mix of predictive analytics and real time data.

Customer service is key

Peer recommendations are becoming increasingly important in the decision-making process, even more so than media product reviews. Negative reviews tend to reach a larger audience than positive reviews, meaning high quality products and excellent customer service are more important than ever. 61% of customers switched providers due to disappointing customer service, according to a recent study by Accenture.

Personalised experiences have been shown to engage customers, and the telecommunications industry should be asking how it can deliver such experiences to all users. This could be customising bandwidth supply according to a user’s individual data usage to meet a particular price point, or through the delivery of digital services and applications that have been personalised to each user such as telecommunications or utility providers offering plans to customers based on their usage. Reactivity and agility will be important qualities in the race to keep up with an evolving digital environment and changing customer expectations.

An improved and efficient customer experience

Digital tools will not only help telecommunications service providers to create personalised customer experiences, they can also help to reduce costs and grow revenue. Increased customer engagement reduces churn¹; lowering the need for hefty spend on customer acquisition and marketing. Targeted offers including cross selling and/or bundling that appeal to the specific needs of customers should increase customer revenue and loyalty.

Customers expect to be able to find the information they need to make an informed decision when purchasing a new product or service. With more intelligent business communications solutions, customers should be directed to the department or information they need faster — increasing first call resolution and reducing customer service costs. This is significant when customer service can account for up to 10% of total operating costs. A report by the World Economic Forum has predicted that such a reduction in customer services and marketing costs, and the associated IT expenditure, could generate up to $18 billion in additional operating profits by 2025.

In the fifth and final part of our Fourth Industrial Revolution series we will explore what telecommunication service providers need to do in order to provide for the new digital workforce.

¹ Del Rowe, S. (2019) ‘Vertafore Ensures Great CX with NewVoiceMedia’, Customer Relationship Management, June, p34.