Communications and media customer service: Process intelligence provides a fresh playbook

In the last decade, telecom and media companies sought to differentiate themselves by focusing on more content, new networks and content platforms, digital transformation and new products such as streaming, insurance, telehealth or home security.

But differentiation opportunities remain stubbornly scarce. Indeed consolidation in the space is well underway and is projected to continue for the rest of the decade, examples here, here and here. 

Customer service levels are at 9-year low and trending down. As companies complete their digital transformations, focusing on customer service provides an opportunity to differentiate.

Customer experience is still key

The other day, a colleague told me they had signed up for a different broadband provider. “I’m sure the connection will be fine,” they said. “But the last time I changed, I had no internet for a week.”

I recently received a renewal offer from my current TV provider. I liked the offer and was happy with my service, so I wanted to accept the offer. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to complete the renewal online, but had to call and wait to speak with a representative. A prospect I wasn’t looking forward to.

These are just two anecdotal examples, but they illustrate that even though many companies have active programs to make their customer experience (CX) better, there’s still plenty of room for improvement.

Buying broadband and content should be no more complicated than buying from Amazon or Netflix. Granted, there’s more complexity signing up for a new broadband line compared to creating a new streaming account, but a simple, digital-first experience should be the north star. As the authors of a 2023 McKinsey & Company article on telecom CX noted:

“Telcos’ failure to deliver excellent digital service hurts their bottom lines in multiple ways, most significantly through customer acquisition and retention. Across sectors, a majority of online customers abandon their shopping carts if the checkout process is too difficult or time-consuming.”

As an example, a customer using Celonis found more than $100M worth of conversion opportunities for an e-commerce journey like the one McKinsey is alluding to.

The telecommunications and media CX playbook needs a refresh

So far organizations have focused their CX improvement in using digital channels more, rationalizing their product portfolios, refreshing the brand, tweaking their positioning and pricing, modernizing IT systems, and outsourcing/offshoring work.

Some have started using AI—a recent addition with an evolving diversity of use cases and domains. For example, there are GenAI-based chatbots, customer prediction models, knowledge management for agents, content creation, and general automation and productivity use cases.

AI is clearly here to stay and will keep evolving, but the rest of the playbook is mostly executed. So what’s next?

A single process intelligence layer

A concern we often hear from companies is: “Even though our service teams can sometimes address individual customer issues, we can’t resolve our customer problems at scale because we don’t understand their root cause well.” For example, if a customer reaches out with a billing issue, an agent or chatbot may be able to solve that one instance of the problem, but the overall issue still exists. In many cases, the underlying problems are generally known within the organization, at least anecdotally, but the deep insights needed to understand the process problems driving them and the tools required to take action have yet to be deployed.

And that’s what Celonis can uncover. Through a single operations intelligence layer combining process knowledge and unstructured data sources (e.g., email exchanges with a customer) an opportunity opens up to address issues like cost/revenue/margin leakages, customer provisioning/billing issues and supply chain inefficiencies, which are all process problems and digital transformation hasn’t addressed.

Next generation visibility and transparency give organizations new energy to drive determined action to eliminate problems. And with a digital twin of the organization, AI models can be trained on the specific business context, not just what’s available on the internet. 

Process Intelligence in CX: The time is now

It may seem like implementing a process intelligence layer is out of reach, especially if you’re already grappling with transformation initiatives like a system migration. Yet there are also tactical improvements to be had and the direction of travel should be clear.

Companies can create this layer gradually by improving processes and simplifying operations one step at a time, delivering tangible value to maintain momentum and ultimately delivering the customer experience we all want. For example, Celonis is working with a telecoms operator who’s using our platform to eliminate common issues in their ethernet commissioning process. Another is working to eliminate billing exceptions. And our most sophisticated customers use Celonis process intelligence as the connective tissue of their enterprise, gaining end-to-end visibility across their finance, supply chain, IT and customer service operations. For the first time, everyone in an organization has a common language for how the business runs, visibility into where value is hiding, and the ability to capture it.

Alvaro Escudero

Global Client Director at Celonis

Alvaro is a Global Client Director in the Celonis UK office with a background in media and telecoms.