The telecommunications industry has made heroic efforts through the pandemic to serve the public with remote work, video streaming, remote education, disadvantaged group outreach, etc. Despite this, the industry has struggled in the market for many years with intense competition, new entrants, massive technology changes, and decisions to consolidate with and divest content providers. As telecommunications firms look to business transformation in order to drive strong market growth, they will need to take accompanying digital transformation steps.

Customer Experience – To improve Net Promoter Scores, reduce Cost to Serve, and avoid churn, many telcos are looking to make major improvements in their customer experience. This may take a variety of forms including an omnichannel experience; proactive support; virtual agents; portals with strong, simple user interfaces; and self-service, as favored by many digital natives.

Data Analytics – Innovative AI and data analytics can help telcos in several ways. From the customer experience standpoint, they can identify and prevent what would otherwise become customer satisfaction issues. Predictive analytics are key to churn analysis and customer retention. Analytics can be of great value in taking advantage of the huge amount of data generated from IoT sensors. Finally, machine learning (ML) can drive capital efficiency as telcos contemplate where to make capital-intensive investments.

5G - 5G represents a critical opportunity for telcos to drive revenue directly and through 5G-enabled IoT solution providers. Unfortunately, a 5G talent gap and increasing project deployment delays are putting the competitive market positions of carriers and their suppliers at risk.