How Telecoms Use Conversational AI for Better Customer Outcomes

A company is nothing without its customers. This is why many telecommunication businesses establish Customer Success teams— sometimes called Account Management or Customer Experience teams— to keep relationships with customers happy and healthy.

But this isn’t an easy task. Customer Success teams often struggle with high customer-to-account manager ratios, making it difficult—if not impossible—to provide every customer with the attention they need to succeed.

Fortunately, there are technical solutions that telecom companies can leverage to make the most of every customer account. Let’s explore how artificial intelligence (AI) for customer experience can help telecommunications companies augment their Customer Success teams to drive better outcomes.

What’s the Difference Between Customer Success and Customer Service?

It’s important to note that Customer Success is different from Customer Service. Customer Success focuses on proactive engagements that drive customers towards better outcomes. This includes effectively onboarding new customers and expanding product usage.

Customer Service, on the other hand, is more reactive. If a customer runs into a problem, Customer Service helps them troubleshoot.

Another difference is that Customer Success works on retaining and generating revenue from customers, while Customer Service deflects costs.

Capacity Problems and Retention Problems

It’s common knowledge that keeping a customer is more cost-effective than gaining a new customer. In fact, boosting customer retention by just 5% increases revenue by 25% to 95% . If your organization is not prioritizing customer retention, you’re likely leaving good money on the table.

But there are only so many hours in a day to proactively assist customers. And with customer-to-account manager ratios running as high as 50:1 or 100:1, Customer Success teams are forced to prioritize some accounts over others. Naturally, high-value accounts (those with the greatest investments in your offerings) get the most attention while low-value accounts (that make up the majority of the base) receive less attention. This creates an inconsistent customer experience which can frustrate customers and cause them to churn.

Some businesses assume that frustrated customers will voice their dissatisfaction, thus giving Customer Success teams the opportunity to react. Sadly, this is rarely the case. The vast majority (96%) of customers won’t complain, they’ll simply leave and never come back.

Instead of waiting for dissatisfied customers to speak up, telecoms should look for warning signs of an account at risk such as missed meetings or quarterly business reviews and low product/service usage.

If telecoms want to keep customers, they need to adopt technologies that provide greater visibility into customer health, provide a consistent customer experience across accounts, and drive customers towards the next best action—all while expanding team capacity.

Customer Success Software for Telecommunications

Telecommunications companies are ripe for AI adoption. As businesses progressively serve larger user bases, they’ll need innovative solutions to better handle personalized communications with customers. This is where AI comes in—specifically, Conversational AI.

Conversational AI, a combination of Natural-Language Processing (NLP) and Machine Learning, engages customers in two-way, human-like conversations across multiple channels.

What does this mean for Customer Success teams? Conversational AI autonomously crafts and delivers personalized messages at scale that help motivate customers to take action. These actions include:

• Promptly onboarding new customers,
• Politely collecting customer feedback,
• Persistently driving customer health
• Expanding product usage,
• and Motivating interest in expansion opportunities.

By automating these interactions, Conversational AI for telecom helps Customer Success teams to alleviate capacity bottlenecks and deliver a personalized touch to every customer. More proactive attention means happier customers—and happier customers mean more revenue retained and more opportunities for expansion.

If you’re ready to empower your Customer Success team and delight your customers, consider Conversational AI.

Want a deeper dive into what Conversational AI and AI Assistants can do for your business? Explore our eBook How Intelligent Automation Increases Revenue in the Telecommunication Industry.