Artificial intelligence is seen an important tool for telecom operators to improve customer experience but telcos must align their AI strategy with their business objective rather than treat it as self-servicing purpose, says Rene Werner, chief customer service and customer experience officer at Celcom Axiata.
Speaking at a keynote at ConnecTechAsia in Singapore on Wednesday, Werner said Celcom went through a tough time as a company in 2015 and 2016, losing heavily with 20-50% of market share based on “a failed transformation technology.”
“So we rewind and focus on the customer experience and we’ve managed to grow our market share,” he said.
Werner said that AI is one of these tools that Celcom use to create a great customer experience, but to succeed, more also needs to be done in training the staff and changing the business processes.
“AI is worthless unless we take action and create value of it,” he said.
In the case of Celcom Axiata, he said, the operator has deployed AI which covers the entire business operations from customer feedback, social media, network experience to contact center.
For example, Celcom Axiata built a “social media experience center”, which is touted as one of the first of its kind in Southeast Asia, using a holistic approach underpinned by AI to service and interact with customers.
Should a customer of a Celcom competitor complain about their service provider on social media, Celcom would seize the opportunity to offer that same consumer a chance to try Celcom’s solutions out.
“This is the way you can create tangible business – turning your competitors’ customers into your customers,” said Werner.
Another example is to deploy customer analytics solutions to understand and visualize individual journeys for a customer across all touchpoints, seamlessly and in real-time.