In the last decade, telecom providers have been racing to find the lowest price first in order to attract new customers and keep existing ones from leaving. With market rivals having to copy this practice to stay competitive, it has become an uphill struggle to maximise margins and increase profits when every industry player is reducing their prices.
The combination of technology and IoT have been touted as the new drivers of operational savings, but there’s far more scope for technology to influence the wider telecoms market, as well as the pricing, in order to increase profits.
Improved customer insights
Primarily, technology and more specifically billing technology, will be able to produce granular viewpoints and analysis from CSR and ‘Big Data’ to profile subscribers and create accurate and insightful buyer personas with actionable analytics. As the data is based on real-word behaviour, the veracity of the results would be beyond doubt and will present suppliers with more than just a glimpse of their customer’s behaviour, wants and needs. Providers can then interpret the data as they see fit, to design and create the next wave of products that will become essential to customers, given the consideration taken to create a product that specifically suits them.
Reduced operating costs
Technology will also drive the operating costs of telecoms providers down in the same way that it will for all businesses. IoT sensors and CSR data can be analysed to find cost-cutting measures like energy savings or negating the need for staff to spend time that could be spent more productively, trying to interpret large amounts of data.
Improved customer service
Customer support will also benefit from the introduction of technology, in fact you may have already noticed the proliferation of instant messaging boxes in the bottom right hand corner of websites. Though these used to connect you to a customer support representative, advancements in language processing have allowed these programs to replace those team members, further reducing staffing requirements and saving your business money.
One logical step to increase margins would be the removal of support for legacy products and networks. With the switch off of the PTSN network in 2025 for example, companies that choose not to offer such services would inherently reduce operation costs, however those businesses would at risk of alienating customers that wish to carry on using the network until the bitter end.
Maximising margins is good, if not essential, for the short-term success of telecoms businesses but having appealing margins is only beneficial if you have the customers to supply to. Therefore, providing a service that keeps existing customers from moving to a different provider is just as important.
The role of intelligent billing platforms
Becoming an invaluable asset to your customers may seem like a ‘pipe-dream’ but “intelligent” billing platforms will enable telecoms providers to be proactive in alerting their customers to issues, optimise networks and drive efficiency savings within the business itself.
ZOEY has a revolutionary built-in margin analysis suite that has been designed to replicate the day to day running of your business, allowing you to have in-depth granular views on margins, be that by customer, by CLI or by network.
Most importantly, ZOEY will provide businesses with the ability to gain insightful and actionable data on usage that can be used to create new services or hone existing ones using accurate buyer profiles that will inspire the next generation of telecoms products based on the analysis of current buyer behaviour.
If you’d like a demonstration of our revolutionary billing platform, you can book a demo here.
