You don’t have to be much of a fortune teller to predict that data and video traffic is going to continue to grow exponentially over the next 12 months or that the number of people enjoying LTE coverage is going to skyrocket in the next couple of years.
What’s much harder to predict are the implications of this phenomenal growth for service providers and what they should be doing to get the most out of this opportunity. But as I’m not one to shirk a challenge, here are Amdocs’ forecasts for 2013.
First off, operators will begin to realize the business opportunity that big data brings instead of just worrying about the operational challenge of managing big data. By capturing more customer data and then using analytics to offer proactive and contextual experiences, service providers will be able to offer more enhanced services relevant to the individual subscriber.
Furthermore, service providers will also be able to provide improved customer care by proactively managing their relationship with their customers.
Which neatly brings me to our second prediction -- operators are going to make omni-channel a top priority for 2013, following the example of leading retail vendors who have already made this part of their business strategy. As Vodafone CEO Vittorio Colao has said, "Vodafone wants to be the Amazon of telcos," not in terms of selling but rather top-class customer service.
At present, despite an increased investment in online, self-service channels so as to improve customer care, customers are still finding these channels cumbersome and often have to phone the call center to reach a satisfactory resolution of their query or attempted purchase.
In this context, we will also see that smartphones and smartphone self-care applications will play a significant role in the way customers interact with their service providers.