Today’s telcos and communication service providers (CSPs) are seeking new ways to monetize their offerings and services, especially in light of 5G, IoT, and industrial IoT. In their quest to help telcos ultimately increase average revenue per user (ARPU), telco software vendors need to think about how they can build applications that enable the best avenues and chances for 5G monetization.
There simply aren’t many opportunities for operators to engage with customers on a daily basis. That being the case, each engagement presents a precious opportunity for telcos to engage and delight customers and present them with just the right offer at just the right moment.
To capitalize on the few customer interactions they have, many telcos use customer management applications that allow them to surface hyper-personalized offers at key times when customers are most likely to be receptive.
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Customer management and 5G: A match made in heaven
Customer management is one of the most promising arenas in the telco arena today. Simply put, it has the potential to give operators a significant market edge—especially with the emergence of 5G, which is enabling operators to deploy customer management-focused applications that have lightning speed and precision without compromising on data accuracy.
Research has shown that telco operators have just 250 milliseconds to make a relevant offer during a real-time customer interaction. Breaking this down further, the decision-making part of the offer must occur within 10 milliseconds of the moment presenting itself—a task that was previously impossible with 4G LTE networks.
In short, 5G provides a critical part of the underlying framework that’s enabling telcos to unlock the full potential of customer management. At the same time, when it comes to getting the most value from their solutions, 5G is only part of the equation.
To unleash the full power of customer management and 5G, operators must also address underlying shortcomings inherent in legacy database architectures (e.g., RDBMS solutions) that are making their current customer management applications struggle to keep up with the data volume, velocity, and variety that 5G and IoT present. Operators also need to shift away from batch processing via data lakes and warehouses and implement solutions that support the ability to deliver real-time streaming analytics.
Striving for sub-10 millisecond decisions with customer management
By now, you are probably wondering about the real business value of replacing near real-time analytics systems with sub-second decision-making intelligence.
Here’s one example.
Recently, a company that uses Volt Active Data technology conducted a proof-of-concept with a T1 mobile carrier, seeking to clarify whether using real-time campaigns based on streaming analytics could deliver a greater value than near-real-time campaigns. More specifically, the company wanted to see whether real-time interactions could make a difference in driving revenue growth and reducing churn.
In one test, the team sent messages to intercept customers when they were about to exceed service usage levels and provide them with contextual, real-time offers for a data bundle.
In another, the company identified valuable customers who were about to run out of credit on prepaid services and offered real-time contextual IOU credits.
The results confirmed that using real-time analytics presented a competitive edge over the provider’s existing near-real-time solutions.
In fact, thanks to Volt Active Data, real-time data bundle sales increased by over 50% compared to the company’s existing near-real-time campaign results, and real-time offer adoption rates were 157% higher than those of near-real-time offers. What’s more, subscribers bought 253% more services than customers who received near-real-time offers.
The way the industry is moving, sub-second latency will soon be the industry gold standard. As such, companies that delay or avoid making upgrades risk displacement from competitors who can provide relevant offers instantaneously and at opportune times.
According to a recent report, 92% of telcos are planning 5G deployments by 2022. Through 2025, telcos will spend upwards of $275 billion building out 5G networks. Suffice it to say that things are moving very quickly in this space, and it’s vital to remain ahead of the curve if you want to stay competitive.
Enabling next-gen customer management with Volt Active Data
Volt Active Data gives telcos the ability to deliver real-time revenue generation capabilities while meeting customers’ evolving expectations around latency and personalization, without necessarily having to replace their entire tech stack.
Volt Active Data’s event-driven architecture makes it possible for applications to make intelligent decisions on anomalous data in under 10 milliseconds, allowing the delivery of targeted offers in the moment instead of after data has made the long journey to and from the data lake or date warehouse, during which time it loses its value.
It’s no surprise, then, that real-time offers deployed by Volt Active Data are 1.5 to 2.5 times more successful than those served up via traditional systems.
To learn more about the easiest way to improve your customer management solution, take Volt Active Data for a test drive today.
