How AI-Based Marketing Is Transforming Telecom Companies
As telecom operators look toward customer-centric and data-driven marketing, discover how AI can help them.
As times change rapidly, telecom operators face greater risks today than earlier. To delight and acquire customers, they should move away from business-driven marketing to customer-centric and data-driven marketing. AI can massively help them in this regard. Jerry Johnson, founder and president of marketing, Data Science Associates, explains how.
Telecom operators are more vulnerable to risk today than they were ten years ago. They must act quickly and decisively to survive the upcoming challenges and beyond. To please, keep, and acquire customers, telecom operators are moving away from the business-driven marketing that they have traditionally embraced and toward customer-centric, data-driven, highly tailored efforts that are always on and always developing.
Artificial Intelligence can automate customer segmentation, churn prevention, predicting a customer’s lifetime value, product development, margin expansion, price optimization, promotion mix across ad platforms, and other tasks.
With telecom giants reaping significant benefits from AI in marketing, here are a few examples of how it can aid businesses.
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Increase in Product Marketing
Telcos collect data from millions of customers, which can be used to create targeted marketing campaigns via text, email, online ads, etc. By leveraging AI, telcos will be able to gain a more real-time picture of their users’ experiences, as well as critical marketing knowledge, allowing them to outperform their competitors.
Incorporating AI in product marketing helps businesses to adopt data-first strategies as a mindset. In a more service-based business, AI can also help automate specific processes.
One can also incorporate machine learning apps and algorithms as extensions of their product offering to enhance customer experience and value. AI technology is quickly becoming the go-to way of learning about consumers through its post-launch user feedback collection systems.
As the reliance on AI for sharper insights, suggestions and trends increases, AI will become an integral part of product marketing.
Improved Campaign Performance
Companies like Bharti Airtel, an Indian Telecommunications solutions provider, have entered the advertising sector with the launch of Airtel Ads, a strong brand engagement solution. Airtel Ads uses Airtel’s data science expertise to help businesses create high-engagement and high-impact campaigns for the most relevant client segments. This also ensures that Airtel users receive only the most relevant brand offers from Airtel and not spam.
During the beta phase, Airtel Ads ran successful campaigns for businesses in various industries, including FMCG, BFSI, and digital startups. Among the first advertisers are PepsiCo, Zomato, CRED, Tata AIG, Lenskart, Apollo 247, Cars24, Gameskraft, Vahan, and Harley Davidson.
AI can improve campaign performance by ad targeting, personalization and automating user journeys. With the help of AI, telcos can target ads to specific customers based on the secured information they have about their buying history and user preferences.
Personalization as a strategy to improve several types of marketing campaigns is not a new thing. However, AI can rapidly grow its scale and capacity. And with automating user journeys, marketers can help decrease the time and costs of sales targets and conversions, thereby raising the bar for a campaign’s effectiveness.
Addressing Customer Service Issues Better
Pointillist, a customer-journey analytics solution used by Comcast, tracks each customer’s actions across the company’s ecosystem. The service records visitor interactions and generates travel maps. Comcast responds quickly to customer experience concerns by gathering data and identifying where journeys fail, such as with its mobile app.
On a larger scale, it provides customer satisfaction. Comcast’s XI Talking Guide service “speaks” network names/time slots and show titles to help users navigate their television options. Individuals with disabilities, as well as anyone who prefers to “search” with their voice rather than pressing buttons on the remote, will benefit from the company’s voice remote.
The above case study is one of the many ways telcos and other industries can address customer service issues. Another innovative application of AI in customer service is AI training. AI training, wherein the AI takes on the role of customers, helps employees in the front-end customer service to get holistically educated about various issues and scenarios. This can help businesses cut back on major labor and time costs.
Other than that, telcos companies can also use various AI-powered software that analyses customer feedback, so that customer support can respond and find more appropriate solutions. Sentiment analysis leads to better empathy, leading to a better company-customer relationship.
Improved Digital Marketing and Customer Engagement
Artificial intelligence (AI) precision engagement solutions, like Deloitte’s ConvergeHEALTH CognitiveSparkTM, have already been introduced to the market. This AI-powered product provides healthcare technology solutions that connect all stakeholders in the healthcare industry, from patients to regulators and create a more personalized healthcare system. Their solutions include using AI for deep learning, predictive analytics, personalized interactions, and enhancing telehealth, among many more.
CognitiveSpark, also by Deloitte, enables life sciences companies to make AI-powered decisions at scale and speed, increasing their digital marketing ROI (ROI). The cloud-based products offer well-integrated data insights and marketing intelligence, machine learning and analytic technologies with recommendations, multi-dimensional visualizations of complex data, and free-form user analysis.
Such products solve problems by allowing users to easily integrate disparate data sources, breaking down traditional silos and enabling insight-driven decision-making.
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Notifications Sent at More Appropriate Times
Smart Notifications, an AI/ML solution for mobile apps that optimizes notification delivery to users, employs AI in marketing to assist businesses in sending messages to users at the most appropriate time. The system boosts push campaign engagement by determining the best time of day to send notifications to consumers when they are most open to brand interactions.
Though telco operators face significant challenges, artificial intelligence can assist in overcoming them, with service operations being an up-and-coming area. AI and machine learning, for example, are enabling a new era of change and innovation. In the long run, telcos that take advantage of this opportunity to continue their development along this path are more likely to emerge as undisputed winners.
Companies thrive in this data era with two major mediums; one focuses on AI, while the other is primarily dependent on human capabilities. With enormous data and complexities handled in industries, the possibility of error and loss of expenses remains under the supervision of humans. Thus, telcos must use AI to stay ahead of their competitors. It will be simpler to address problems and automate solutions, run daily operations more efficiently, and provide better customer service and satisfaction.
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