How Telcos Can Leverage Consumer Trust to Deliver Billion-Dollar Digital Services
Consumer behavior is constantly evolving. The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way people live, work, and interact with brands. The challenges brought on by lockdowns and restrictions on movement in public have increased our dependence on online services and accelerated the shift to remote work. With this increased digitization, the need for data, speed, security, and connectivity has risen exponentially. These trends are reshaping the telecom business model for both B2B and B2C clients. In the new digital and 5G race, telcos now stand to gain more than just high-speed, high-performance connectivity. Communication Service Providers can strike gold with billion-dollar monetization avenues in the form of new-age digital services. Consumer trust will play a crucial role in making this a reality.
User Data and Consumer Trust in Telecom
Telecom operators are sitting on an untapped data goldmine. While the industry generates and collects large volumes of consumer data, it has not capitalized this data fully for monetization especially in exploring new digital avenues. As they are governed by various regulatory bodies, Telcos must adhere to stringent user data privacy policies which further limits the use of this data. Without a focused digital objective, most of this data is siloed and unused for enabling or providing digital services.
The challenges brought on by the pandemic have changed the way businesses across sectors operate. From healthcare, education, financial services to entertainment, there has been a dramatic shift to digital channels since the onset of the pandemic, and telecom operators have played a critical role in enabling these digital services. This has increased the overall consumer trust in telcos and consumers today are more willing to share their data with telecom operators.
As per an Analysys Mason Survey, telecom operators today garner more consumer confidence than tech companies. Consumer trust is a valuable asset for building loyalty and driving growth in the digital marketplace. Telcos can capitalize on this trust to unlock new monetization avenues and transition to become providers of new-age digital services. The telecom digital transformation presents a $2 trillion opportunity for the industry.
Making That One Giant Leap Towards Digital Services
With 5G, the access to data on user behavior, and greater trust premium, there is a real potential now for telcos to transform into new-age digital service enablers and providers. Telcos already have all the ingredients necessary to deliver these new-age services – the technology, the speed, the connectivity, the security, and the user data.
In addition to diversifying the business portfolio and opening up new revenue streams, these services allow CSPs to carve out a new digital future for themselves – one that’s conducive to sustainable growth in a hyper-connected world. By diversifying their portfolio and reaching out to all types of online customers, telcos can gear up to become the CSPs of the future.
The Need for Investing in the Right Opportunities and Partners
As consumers continue to switch to online mediums and new digital services, telcos must go beyond traditional services and identify new digital avenues that have the highest potential in terms of ROI. These include consumer services such as entertainment, healthcare, mobile finance, and more. Not all opportunities are worth pursuing, the key is to identify the right digital areas for diversifying the telco business. By identifying the most profitable consumer services, telecom operators can make the right investments and capture the right data to launch successful digital services.
Based on the high-ROI avenues, CSPs can make long-term, growth-focused strategies and invest in the right technologies and partners to deliver digital service in line with customer expectations. A technology-driven approach will enable telcos to make the most of their data, drive automation, and enable a faster transition to new business models. The right technology partnerships can speed up the innovation required to quickly launch new products and services.
Meeting customer experience is vital to sustain consumer confidence in the brand and beat competition. The customer engagement benchmarks must be Ft par with those of other sectors such as OTT.
Change Is Inevitable
On April 3, 1973, Motorola executive Martin Cooper made the first Wi-Fi call from Sixth Avenue, New York to the headquarters of Bell Labs in New Jersey. It was one of the major milestones in cellphone technology that revolutionized the way telecom works. We are now at the cusp of a new revolution – spearheaded by 5G and the rapid digitization. Change is inevitable. Change is also a good opportunity for growth.
Change involves going beyond one’s traditional approach, wading through uncharted waters, and adapting to new realities – no matter what they are. The best strategy for enterprises in today’s dynamic digital landscape, is to be proactive, take a customer-centric approach, evaluate strengths, explore new opportunities and be willing to embrace change to emerge stronger than ever before.
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