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The Winning Factors for a Superior Customer Experience in The Home and Beyond
At the core of how seamlessly integrated and secured services can be delivered to subscribers’ homes is the rapid rise and development of emerging technologies that are fundamentally changing the way consumers interact with NSPs.
Network service providers (NSPs) around the world are in the midst of a comprehensive business transformation process as they scramble to address the emerging needs of customers who depend on digital access to support their personal and professional priorities. As part of this process, NSPs are redefining their relationships with their customers by leveraging insights from data and analytics captured within the home.
These were among the reflections debated during an executive discussion on “The Future of the Customer Experience” hosted by Technicolor Connected Home, known as Vantiva.
How emerging technologies affect customer experience in the home and beyond
At the core of how seamlessly integrated and secured services can be delivered to subscribers’ homes is the rapid rise and development of emerging technologies that are fundamentally changing the way consumers interact with NSPs.
This was the subject of a panel during “The Future of Customer Experience” event, which featured:
- Tanja Richter, Director Consumer Products and Services, Vodafone Group,
- Marcio Avillez, SVP of Business Development, CUJO AI,
- Kara Heermans, VP Product Management, and UEX, Sonifi,
- Mercedes Pastor, President Eurasia, Technicolor Connected Home.
An alphabet soup of technologies — from 5G FWA to AI, AR/VR, IoT, and more — came up during the panel, with each technology introducing dramatically new functionalities that are influencing expectations and customer satisfaction. The ability to bring broadband connectivity to previously unserved markets and provide entirely new services to enhance the personal and professional lives of customers is unfolding at an unprecedented rate.
Over the course of the conversation, however, one technology emerged above others as the driving force: artificial intelligence.
AI is a core technology that is critical to maintaining network operations and guaranteeing security
According to Vodafone’s Richter, “Artificial Intelligence also enables understanding of the kind of applications customers are using and gives them visibility into what is actually happening on their home network. Just as importantly, AI plays a key role in understanding cybersecurity threats and stopping them.”
Avillez, from CUJO AI, could not be in more agreement. The growing complexity of the connected home environment is an irresistible target for bad actors. “AI and machine learning are making it possible to understand what types of applications are being used from which devices. This is the kind of information that needs to be correlated and analyzed in real time to identify threats to the home without disrupting the customer experience. Today, we have close to 15 million homes where NSPs are using AI as the main frontline cybersecurity defense for residential broadband home customers. These are value propositions that NSPs can offer today…and that you couldn’t do without AI in the past.”
The ability to capture, effectively analyze — and automatically act on — important insights will likely emerge as a key differentiator for NSPs through mid-decade and become a competitive requirement by 2030. It introduces opportunities to engineer better networks and craft better customer experiences.
Powered by AI, telecom networks will set new frontiers of automation
As Heermans, from Sonifi put it: “The best network is one that you can’t see, because it is managing itself. This requires intelligence and automation that removes the need to have technicians examining a pile of logs or looking at complex dashboards that then prompt physical trips to devices to fix transmission settings. The ability to optimize networks that can care for themselves ultimately equates to a better experience for the end users — and more efficient operations and profitable operations for NSPs.”
Technicolor Connected Home’s Pastor concurred. “Artificial intelligence is going to be an enabler that will not only optimize network performance, but also manage the growing complexity in the home. This high level of digital interaction with customers is driving a smarter and more personalized model of engagement with NSPs in which they play a much bigger role managing the experience for subscribers,” she said.
The notes captured in this report reflect a fraction of the insights shared and discussed over the course of a half-day event. To view the on-demand version of this panel, along with the other sessions from the event, check in on our customer portal, Explore.
