Customers expect interactions with a brand to be quick and easy. Anyone who has ever ordered from Amazon (and who hasn’t?) understands this expectation. According to a survey of 484 global customer experience (CX) leaders, 57% said that customers expect departments to be seamlessly integrated for quick resolution and support.  

According to the PwC Customer Loyalty Survey 2022, 26% of respondents stopped using or buying from a business in the past year. More than half (55%) of respondents would stop buying from a company after several negative experiences, and 8% would stop after just one bad experience. 

Banks, insurance companies, communication service providers, healthcare organizations and retail businesses must deliver convenient, frictionless customer experiences–or lose customers.

What Causes Customer Friction?

Customer friction is any interaction in a customer journey that slows them down or makes it harder to buy, use or manage a product or service. Customers may encounter friction at any point in the CX lifecycle (discover, buy, onboard, use and manage, support and resolve, grow). Anything that interferes with a customer completing a sale, paying a bill, or solving a problem is a source of friction. Common pain points include:

A website with minimal resources. Customers search your website and social media to learn about your company’s products and services. If they can’t find the information quickly, they will move on to another brand. Website personalization makes it quicker and easier for customers to locate relevant facts. Optimizing the website and adding links, product descriptions, reviews and blog posts also help consumers make informed decisions. 

A convoluted buying process. When customers add a toy to their cart, they expect to complete the purchase in less than a minute. According to a survey of 2,000 American consumers, most people start to have second thoughts about buying items in their shopping cart after 22 seconds. And 50% of shoppers are less likely to buy something online if the entire checkout process takes more than 30 seconds. If they have to create an account, providing unnecessary information, people may abandon their cart instead of wasting time on the extra steps. A streamlined checkout experience reduces the amount of time for second-guessing, so customers are more likely to immediately press the “buy now” button. 

Poor customer service. Customers expect to reach contact center agents immediately, without being placed on hold or waiting hours for an email response. They want your staff to have all the answers and solve their problems right away. By proactively deflecting calls and providing agents with the information they need to assist customers quickly, your contact center can eliminate lengthy waits and provide [deliver?] first call resolution.

Friction Damages Customer Loyalty

Customer experience includes how an individual feels when interacting with your brand before, during and after a transaction. If friction causes people to feel frustrated or annoyed while trying to purchase something or resolve a problem, they may look for another bank or internet provider. 

Customers perceive each interaction with your brand to be 

A low-effort experience. The process requires little input from the customer. They may be able to autofill information, use one-click buying, pay their cable bill using an IVR payment system, or present a QR code to return an item.

Or

A high-effort experience. The customer has to make a lot of effort to get results. They may have to visit several pages on your website to find information, answer personal questions to create an account, explain the problem to four contact center agents or call several times to resolve a problem.  

People prefer the path of least resistance. If they have to work too hard to buy your products or services, apply for a credit card, make a medical appointment or pay their bills, consumers may abandon their shopping cart or application, choose another healthcare provider, and/or delay paying their bills. According to Gartner research, 96% of customers with a high-effort customer service interaction (characterized by channel switching, repeating information, transferred calls, and repeat calls) become more disloyal compared to just 9% who have a low-effort experience. 

Designing a low-effort, frictionless CX is an important strategy to improve customer loyalty.

What is a Frictionless Customer Experience?

Consider your best shopping or customer service experience.  — What made it wonderful? If you’re like most people, that wow! experience probably involved fast, helpful service and an intuitive buying process. Now, compare that to your worst experience. Why does that one stick out in your mind? Were the staff rude or incompetent? Was the buying process slow or frustrating? Perhaps the online shopping experience was so inconvenient that you didn’t complete the purchase and get what you came for.

In essence, a frictionless experience is:

Convenient: Customers should not have to jump through hoops to accomplish their objective. The more steps involved in reaching their goal, the more likely they are to become frustrated and seek solutions–or take their business–elsewhere. More than half (51%) of consumers said they’re less likely to be loyal to a brand if its online shopping experience isn’t as easy or enjoyable as shopping in person.

Fast: People want to find information, complete their purchase, pay their bills, and/or resolve problems quickly. If it takes too long, they’re likely to navigate away and find a competitor that meets their needs more quickly.

Helpful: Your website, self-service options and customer service representatives — must guide customers to meet their needs–whether they’re buying a cell phone, paying a bill, making a medical appointment, or reporting a stolen credit card. goals. Of the 1,065 PwC survey respondents who stopped using a business in the past year, 32% did so because of a negative customer service experience.

Create a Frictionless Customer Experience Journey With Customer Journey Management

To create a frictionless CX, you must eliminate pain points and deliver quick, convenient interactions that encourage customers to continue doing business with your brand. Customer Journey Management helps you deliver frictionless experiences by:

Developing unified customer profiles. A customer data platform collects and manages data about customer interactions with your company across channels (website, email, text) and departments (sales, billing, customer service), building a real-time customer data profile for each customer. This profile allows the creation of personalized, relevant communications.

Determining customer intent. Customer journey analytics tracks and measures every customer interaction with your brand, helping you understand customer needs, desires and expectations. Journey analytics also measures intent indicators (such as intent to purchase or cancel), providing information needed to guide customer interactions. For example, when a customer visits a product page several times in a 3-hour period (demonstrating intent to buy), the journey orchestration system  encourages them to take action by triggering a pop-up offering a limited-time sale on that item.

Orchestrating customer journeys. Customers control their interactions with your brand, but you can guide them toward the next best action to meet their needs. Customer journey orchestration is a decision engine that uses real-time customer data to analyze current behavior, predict future behavior and deliver the right personalized messages at the right time. For example, if the CJO system detects that someone abandoned their shopping cart, it selects the right message to deliver via the customer’s preferred communication channel (email or text), encouraging the customer to complete the purchase

CSG Xponent Ignite Creates Frictionless Customer Experiences

CSG Xponent Ignite, our customer experience solution, includes pre-built customer journeys for four industries: telecommunications, financial services, retail, and healthcare. The foundation of Xponent Ignite is CSG Xponent, our industry-leading, award-winning platform that includes a feature-rich and fully embedded customer data platform (CDP), customer journey orchestration and journey analytics to analyze customer behavior, sentiment and preferences and deliver frictionless customer experiences.

Contact us to learn more.

 
CSG—the industry leader in journey orchestration (JO) software—is currently seeking technically-minded consultants and system implementation specialists to join our partner-led delivery network. Our network helps existing and new clients break down silos and create seamless experiences across channels and journeys.

When done well, true journey orchestration is real-time interaction management that delivers only the most relevant subject matter to the customer and on their preferred channel, benefiting both the customer and the organization they’re interacting with. At CSG, we do this through our market-leading next best action engine, which suppresses, delivers and progressively profiles data based on the customer’s real-time intent and interactions.

A JO platform is designed to traverse all systems in the technology stack. It provides organizations a unified view and control over the customer journey across multiple touchpoints. This cross-system nature is where the domain expertise of systems integrators come into play. Partners often hold deep knowledge and insight around how to most easily and successfully connect to systems of record (CRMs, CDPs, etc.) and martech systems.

As our JO platform—CSG Xponent—and the decisioning/orchestration markets continue to grow at a rapid pace, we recognize the power of working closely with consultants and systems integrators. Other JO providers seek to bring services and enablement in-house. We, however, are making an intentional effort to decentralize professional service offerings. Our clients’ services needs continue to outscope straightforward JO integration— they demand broader customer experience (CX) strategy, journey mapping and ongoing technical support. That means strong consulting partners will be key to enabling ongoing, bold CX transformations.

CSG partners will gain immediate access to CSG clients who are actively seeking specialized knowledge. By aligning with CSG, partners provide implementation support and expertise while opening doors to more revenue-generating opportunities for their organization.

With CSG’s industry leading JO offering in their toolkit, partners can offer clients cutting-edge solutions for journey optimization and real-time decisioning, solidifying their position as trusted consultants in the field.

Why Partner with the CX Team at CSG?

Journey orchestration is a priority—not an afterthought—for CSG. As companies that “specialize” in decisioning hubs shift focus to other opportunities, the JO offering often becomes peripheral to the company’s flagship product. This diminishes support for JO products, which then stagnate in features and function. As a result, CX teams get stuck using outdated legacy tools with insufficient decisioning capabilities in behemoth private stacks. And, for end clients, many of the features and functionalities they paid for wind up underutilized due to a lack of integration capabilities.

At CSG, journey orchestration is at our core. We remain laser focused on platform-agnostic journey orchestration, continuing to enhance, invest in and support our Xponent offering.

We have relationships with some of the biggest brands in the world and multiple quarters of continued profitable growth.

We’re committed to being partner friendly as we embrace this new delivery model, recognizing the tremendous value for all stakeholders.

Benefits of Partnering with CSG to Improve CX

The CSG CX Partner Program enables our systems integration partners to deliver Xponent to their clients.

As a partner, you will

• Accelerate business revenue growth with an enhanced offering and access to CSG-derived opportunities.
• Deliver more value to your clients. Xponent is a powerful tool that can help your clients achieve massive ROI without tearing down their current tech stack. Journey-centric CX transformation will meet your clients’ needs to improve customer satisfaction, loyalty and lifetime value.
• Implement the system rapidly. Xponent Ignite’s industry-specific customer journey templates help businesses get started quickly and provide quick wins in partner go to market (GTM) efforts.
• Receive sophisticated assistance with GTM planning. CSG will provide training and enablement and offer collaboration to bring large projects over the finish line.
• Build industry-specific CX expertise. Implementing Xponent Ignite can help you develop a reputation as a “people + process + technology” expert in CX for one (or more) of these industries:
  • Retail
  • Telecommunications
  • Financial Services and Insurance
  • Healthcare

Join CSG’s CX Partner Ecosystem

Become one of the trusted partners our clients count on for continuous CX innovation. Our program offers a unique platform to leverage cutting-edge technologies, industry insights, and a collaborative network all aimed at improving experiences for end customers. The future of customer experience is here, and it begins with you. Learn more here.

 
Double play. Triple play. Quadruple play.

No, we’re not talking about miraculous baseball feats—we’re referring to bundles of fixed, cable, mobile and internet services offered by a single communications service provider (CSP).

The Rise of Service Convergence: A Wave of Innovation

Service convergence is not just a buzzword; it’s a tangible reality shaping the future of telecommunications. Broadband and internet services are merging with mobile (93%) and fixed (87%) services, according to more than 80% of industry experts surveyed. This innovation is paving the way for a unified and streamlined customer experience.

To thrive in a highly competitive industry, cable operators must deliver a seamless, converged services model across all networks, including cable, mobile and fixed. But doing so can be easier said than done.

Heavy Reading partnered with CSG to survey 93 North American cable and internet service providers (referred to as “service providers”) regarding service convergence trends and growth strategies. Here’s what we learned.
 

Focus on Successful Service Delivery and Greater Network Investment

Effectively delivering a unified customer experience requires taking a strategic approach and prioritizing specific capabilities. Among the most widely suggested strategies among service providers were:

• Have a customer-centric focus. Understanding and addressing customer needs is paramount (91% of respondents).
• Integrate 5G: Harnessing the power of 5G is crucial for enhanced performance and innovation (89% of respondents).
• Offer cloud-based delivery: Embracing cloud-based infrastructure enables agility and scalability (89% of respondents).
• Expand your ecosystem: Collaborations and partnerships foster growth and market reach (88% of respondents).

 
Additional Network Investment Is a Prerequisite for Success

To support the demands of converged services, additional network investment is inevitable. Almost all (89%) of service providers surveyed acknowledged the need for increased network capacity to meet the evolving requirements of customers and technologies.
 

A Reduced Focus on a Bundled Service Model Is Leading to New Services

While bundled services serve a purpose, a shift towards specific use case models is gaining momentum. Most (71%) service providers recognize that customers appreciate tailored offerings that address their specific needs and preferences. As consumer options expand, innovative service providers know that allowing customers to build their own bundle, selecting only the services they need, will likely be the norm. This transition, however, will require time and adaptation, as 59% of respondents still rely primarily on bundled services.

 
Benefits and Limitations of Bundled Services

Bundled services still offer certain advantages, such as:

• Flexibility in pricing models
• Reduced marketing costs
• Simplified customer acquisition

Service providers have integrated additional services into existing bundles based on market demand, including:

• Parental controls (73%)
• On-demand premium video streaming content (65%)
• Home security (52%)
• Gaming (44%)
• Health monitoring (29%)

 
Despite these advantages, bundled services face certain limitations:

• Decreasing customer interest (28%), leading to churn
• Difficulty in upselling (24%)
• Perception of being outdated (22%)

Growth Strategies for Thriving in the Converged Services Era

To navigate the evolving landscape of converged services, cable operators can adopt strategic growth strategies:

1. Enter the mobile market:

• As an MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator) (40%)
• As an MNO (Mobile Network Operator) (31%)

Cable companies driven by the increasing popularity of mobile services and the potential for revenue growth are entering the mobile market, grabbing an ever-growing share. The speed of 5G networks (72%) and the consumer allure of 5G devices (62%) are the top two mobile entrance drivers. Leaders like Comcast and Charter entered the mobile realm in 2020. And the sixth-largest U.S. cable provider, Astound Broadband, recently launched Astound Mobile, with plans to serve four million homes using T-Mobile’s network. The mobile service revenue pool is nearly 2.5 times greater than residential broadband, making mobile a lucrative prospect for cable companies.

2. Migrate services to the public cloud:

• Parental controls (67%)
• On-demand premium video streaming (62%)

This migration is driven by the scalability and cost efficiency of public cloud platforms.

3. Acquire new tools and technologies:

• Digitization programs (55%)
• Automated network operations (54%)
• Advanced analytics (53%)
• Automated network optimization (45%)

These tools and technologies enhance service delivery and operational efficiency.

Want to learn more?

As the telecommunications landscape undergoes a transformative shift, service convergence emerges as a driving force, blurring the lines between traditional fixed, cable, mobile and internet services. This convergence, characterized by the seamless integration of communication networks and technologies, presents a wealth of opportunities for cable operators to enhance their offerings and expand their market reach.

CSG, a leading provider of innovative customer engagement, revenue management and payments solutions, empowers cable operators to thrive in this dynamic environment. Our cloud-first architecture and customer-centric approach enable cable operators to:

• Launch cutting-edge digital services.
• Expand into untapped markets.
• Create dynamic customer experiences that attract new subscribers and foster brand loyalty.

With CSG’s expertise and solutions, cable operators can confidently navigate the complexities of service convergence and unlock their full potential in this rapidly evolving market.

 
Mashed potatoes. Stuffing. Green bean casserole. Macaroni and cheese. Cranberry sauce.

According to a Campbell’s survey, Americans serve an average of five side dishes (not necessarily the ones listed above) for Thanksgiving. While some people prefer these tasty sides to the main event, the meal just isn’t Thanksgiving dinner without the turkey.

Similarly, some businesses have loaded up on customer engagement solution “side dishes.” But they lack the main course—a customer journey orchestration solution that serves up appetizing customer experiences.

Mashed Potatoes Alone Don’t Make a Meal. And a CRM Alone Doesn’t Improve CX

A customer relationship management (CRM) system stores and manages customer data and automates sales outreach. Focusing primarily on sales, CRMs don’t guide customer service and other interactions that occur after the purchase. They don’t provide the context needed to understand customer intent, and they can’t determine the right messages to send customers who are on multiple, simultaneous journeys.

CRMs are the “mashed potatoes”—the most popular side dish—on the customer engagement solution menu. According to a Forrester survey of global CX leaders, 70% of the 217 CX leaders who are using a customer engagement solution are using a CRM, making it the most widely-used customer engagement solution among survey respondents. Only 41% of CX leaders are using a journey orchestration platform (the main course).

But like mashed potatoes don’t make a balanced meal by themselves, a CRM by itself doesn’t significantly improve customer experience. Of the 217 CX leaders using a customer engagement solution, fewer than half indicated that the solution improved CX and business outcomes. This suggests that a CRM isn’t enough to get the job done.

Popular Customer Engagement Solution Side Dishes

A customer data platform (CDP) is a software platform that collects, integrates, and manages customer data from various sources—such as a CRM, contact center systems, billing, browsing history, and electronic medical records—to create a unified profile for every customer. While customer data profiles are essential for personalization, data by itself isn’t helpful. It’s how you use that data that matters. Most people don’t eat cranberry sauce by itself but adding it to your turkey sandwich gives your leftovers a tasty kick, just like adding a CDP to your customer journey orchestration (CJO) platform.

CDPs don’t send messages in real-time based on current behavior, and they don’t provide the context needed to understand customer behavior. Most importantly, a CDP by itself can’t make journey-centric decisions and send the right messages at the right time to meet customers’ needs. Knowing that someone recently compared credit cards online isn’t helpful if you don’t immediately send a tailored message encouraging the person to submit the application. If you wait a few days, the person has already applied for another bank’s credit card.

Campaign management systems aid in planning, executing, and tracking marketing campaigns. This software includes tools for creating and sending email campaigns, managing social media posts, and tracking website traffic. Focusing primarily on sales (not what comes afterward), CMSs efficiently send sales-related messages to large groups of people. However, they don’t use customer data profiles to send tailored messages. These systems can’t detect intent or predict customers’ needs.

The common ingredients that are missing from these customer engagement side dishes are the ability to:

1. Determine the context of customer interactions to understand behavior, detect intent and predict needs.
2. Send the right communications to customers at the right time to meet their needs.

Where’s the Turkey?

A customer journey orchestration platform brings together data from your other customer engagement systems and makes it all work together—and better. The turkey is what transforms the collection of side dishes into a special holiday meal.

A CJO platform…

• Ingests and unifies data
• Segments data in real time
• Uses intelligent decisioning to trigger the next best action in the moment, across a variety of channels

CJO analyzes data from multiple systems:

• CDP (real-time customer data profiles)
• Billing system (bill pay status)
• CRM (account type, contract term)
• Surveys (customer sentiment/intent)
• Segments
• Engagement (channel activity, web/mobile/apps)

To determine context, customer intent and… 

• What messages to send
• At what time
• Over which channel

CJO executes the journey steps for the appropriate journey. It prevents sending the wrong messages (e.g., an upsell offer to a customer who is disputing a wireless bill).

Don’t Blow Your CX Budget on CES Side Dishes. Leave Room for the Main Course.

If you eat too much sweet potato casserole and macaroni and cheese, you won’t have room for turkey (a good source of lean protein, important for satiety). Likewise, if you spend too much money purchasing customer engagement tools that don’t work together, you’ll miss out on the real meat of customer experience improvement—customer journey orchestration.

CSG Xponent: Your Recipe for CX Success

CSG Xponent, our award-winning, industry-leading customer engagement software, is the centerpiece for your customer engagement side dishes. Xponent combines a customer data platform with industry best customer journey analytics and journey orchestration to detect customer intent and guide your customers towards their best next action. That’s something to be thankful for!

Sean Casey, Senior Vice President of Product Management at CSG, provides a comprehensive analysis of the opportunities and challenges facing telecom operators in the rollout of 5G private networks.

In this GSMA exclusive interview, Sean also delves into the potential for operators within the enterprise market and shares insights on the transformative impact of Artificial Intelligence.

For a deeper understanding of CSG’s telecommunications solutions, please visit: www.csgi.com/industry/telecommunications.

Uncover valuable insights with Greg Tilton as he explores the significance of TM Forum’s ‘Ready for ODA’ status program. Gain a comprehensive understanding of how this program is integral to CSG, and delve into the benefits it offers to both our partners and customers.

BCE is the billion-dollar opportunity for mobile network operators.

Many IoT use cases—such as logistics and goods tracking, fleet management, connected vehicles and health monitoring—are based on national and international roaming. But if mobile network operators can’t charge correctly for roaming, they can’t monetize IoT services. That’s where BCE (Billing and Charging Evolution) saves the day.

BCE helps mobile network operators increase revenue by offering innovative, new IoT services to their customers. According to Kaleido Intelligence, BCE presents mobile network operators with an opportunity to monetize low-bandwidth permanent roaming (IoT) devices and generate more than $2 billion annually in untapped wholesale revenue by 2026. And BCE-enabled automated settlement in wholesale roaming will enable a cumulative $5 billion in savings by 2026.

If billions of dollars of revenue and cost-saving opportunities aren’t enough reasons for operators to adopt the BCE standard, there are many other important benefits.

Out With the Old: TAP Is No Longer Fit for Purpose

Designed to handle roaming and billing settlements primarily for voice and SMS data, the old billing approach—TAP (Transfer Account Procedures)—isn’t flexible enough to handle the large volumes of data and variety of use cases such as 5G network slicing. TAP is now in maintenance mode and will be replaced by BCE in the coming years.

TAP Limitations

• Too complex, rigid and costly for 5G and IoT technologies
• Cannot cope with the large numbers of events generated by 5G, particularly IoT devices
• TAP’s event-based charging mechanisms are not suited to monetize new business models and could lead to billing errors
• Cannot support future charging models, especially for 5G Standalone (SA) services

TAP’s billing mechanism relies primarily on event-based charging. This means permanently roaming IoT devices that consume little data—but use significant network resources—generate only modest revenue for operators. IoT devices which are effectively silent for long time periods and consume small amounts of data are therefore not monetized.

For an IoT system with millions of sensors, the activity of each sensor on its own is worth very little. But when you add all the activity together, it becomes highly valuable—if you can charge for it correctly.

In With the New: BCE Is the Future of Roaming Settlement

Developed by GSMA to address TAP’s limitations, the Billing and Charging Evolution (BCE) standard is “a simplified and flexible optional settlement method, tailor-made for future wholesale roaming settlement needs of operators.”

BCE offers the flexibility to support new services (such as 5G slicing and IoT), business models, partner ecosystems, and enhanced charging and discounting models.

BCE supports wholesale roaming settlement in 5G and IoT and allows operators to agree on settlement windows between themselves (monthly, quarterly, annually or bespoke). Operators can use commercial models (such as volume and tier agreements) that support the monetization of 5G use cases. BCE enables a new standardized reconciliation process: reconcile usage or charge or both.

Expected to be finalized in Q4 2023, BCE 2.0 will support data formats and charging models needed to support new 5G SA services such as 5G network slicing. The BCE 2.0 standard will be a mandatory requirement for 5G SA services.

How BCE Roaming Settlement Works

With the flexible BCE approach to roaming settlement, TAP files or raw event detailed records (EDRs) don’t need to be exchanged. Instead, the settlement process is “driven by new formats like Usage Data Report, Billing Statement Report and Detailed Data Record which together build a robust framework for seamless revenue assurance.” The serving party (visited operator) shares these BCE reports with the served party (home operator), and uses them to generate invoices.

[Source: GSMA:  https://www.gsma.com/aboutus/workinggroups/interoperability-data-specifications-and-settlement-group/billing-and-charging-evolution ]

Why Should Operators Adopt BCE?

• BCE is a must-have for 5G and IoT 
• BCE will gradually and eventually replace TAP
• Serving parties and served parties have access to the same usage information generated in their respective networks, improving the accuracy of settlements and reducing disputes. 

6 Benefits of BCE Roaming Settlement for Operators

Flexibility and control.

BCE is more flexible and less prescriptive than TAP, allowing operators to define their wholesale bilateral roaming agreements, such as:

• Data exchange frequency
• Settlement windows (monthly, quarterly, annually or bespoke)
• How to manage financial transactions efficiently

Increased process efficiency.

BCE reduces the need for frequent data exchanges (mandated under TAP), saving operators time and money. Reduced data exchange is especially valuable when dealing with data-intensive services such as IoT, 5G SA roaming and permanent roaming (e.g., IoT devices).

Support for new 5G and IoT services.

BCE is essential for 5G SA Roaming. BCE supports a range of charging and settlement models, including count-based (e.g., IMSI count) and volume-based charging.

Automated reconciliation.

BCE enables accurate and timely reconciliation of charges between operators for roaming services. Operators reconcile invoices against home-generated event records (EDRs) for events happening in the visited network, preventing unnecessary outpayments and speeding up dispute resolution. Home-generated EDRs can be promptly passed on to Fraud Management and other downstream systems without waiting for data from the visited network. 

Reduced costs through decreased reliance on clearing houses.

With BCE, home routing of roaming events means that operators can settle directly, reducing clearing house scope and associated fees.

Reduced costs through reusing an existing settlement system.

Because wholesale roaming settlement with BCE is very similar to traditional intercarrier settlement and reconciliation processes, operators can reuse core functionalities from their existing settlement systems for roaming settlement. Operators thus save money by reducing their software and hardware footprint.   

Best Practices for Adopting BCE Roaming Settlements

1. Adopt BCE now. Operators don’t have to wait for 5G SA roaming to adopt BCE. They can start using BCE for services such as NB-IoT (NarrowBand IoT), building readiness for 5G SA in the process.
2. Use one settlement system for TAP and BCE. Administer existing TAP agreements and new BCE agreements in the same settlement system that deals with intercarrier and partner settlement. Increasingly, intercarrier settlement and roaming settlement departments are merging within different operator organizations, motivated by a desire to reduce costs. Operators need a holistic view across intercarrier and roaming agreements with the same partner operator. Using one settlement system for both simplifies the conversion of TAP agreements into BCE over time.
3. Take direct control of roaming agreements. By administering roaming agreements in-house, operators increase autonomy over the most important factors: cost and revenue. This helps operators react quickly and accurately to ongoing changes (e.g., frequent rate changes) and track discount and volume agreements on a consistent basis.

In summary, operators don’t have to wait for 5G SA to adopt BCE roaming. With the widespread launch of 5G SA services in the next two years, BCE will become an absolute essential. But operators are already embracing BCE to support services such as NB-IoT. BCE is a valuable tool that can help operators increase their revenues by offering new, innovative services to their customers.

CSG’s digital partner management solution allows operators to manage TAP and BCE roaming, as well as wholesale/partner settlements, from a unified solution. The solution builds on CSG’s world leading digital wholesale expertise deployed at 200+ carriers globally.

• Supports new charging models
• Automates reconciliation
• Accurate invoices with fewer disputes
• Lowers total cost of ownership
• Scalable to 5G event volumes
• Maintains full audit and data integrity
• Significant year-on-year R&D investment in product roadmap that tracks evolving GSMA standards

Contact us for more information on our BCE roaming and digital partner management solutions.

“Your customer doesn’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” – Damon Richard, a customer care expert.

If you don’t know your customers, it’s difficult (if not impossible) to meet their needs, deliver better customer experiences and, ultimately, show them you care. That knowledge comes from empathy—putting yourself in another person’s shoes, understanding their thoughts and feelings, and using that identification to guide actions. Practicing empathy can be easier said than done. Only 62% of senior executives say they can put themselves in their customers’ shoes.

A recent Forrester report—Spark, Nurture and Fire Up Empathy to Drive Innovation—describes strategies to ignite empathy and create a customer-centric business. While technology plays a crucial role in shaping customer experiences, it’s important to remember that at the core of every great interaction is empathy. The insights from this report have far-reaching implications for organizations seeking to drive innovation across the entire customer journey.

What Is Customer Empathy and Why Is It Crucial?

Customer empathy is the ability to see things from the customer’s perspective and comprehend their pain points. Customer empathy means understanding:

1. What a consumer experiences when they use your products or services
2. Customers’ deeper needs, motivations and goals that influenced their decision to engage with your brand in the first place

Recognizing customer needs and desires helps you meet those needs, improving CX—and the bottom line. Greater customer empathy builds trust, loyalty and meaningful relationships that increase customer lifetime value.

According to a survey of 250 individuals at 180 B2B companies, companies with very mature customer-centricity realized 2.5X greater revenue growth by leading with empathy compared with those reporting “very immature” customer-centricity.

Three Strategies to Ignite Customer Empathy

1. Connect to uncover how people feel, behave, and think.

CX teams need to observe and understand customers’ experiences before they try to improve them. To predict customer intent and communicate proactively, you must understand the path customers take while interacting with your brand.

• How do they purchase an item, schedule an appointment or service, pay their bills and get support for a problem?
• Where does the process break down? (e.g. abandon shopping cart, hang up on IVR, receive offers during a service issue)
• What are the pain points driving calls into the contact center? (e.g. bill confusion, lack of proactive communication)

Your job is to answer such questions by  analyzing customer actions in context to better understand why they behave the way they do. Your research team can gather information about customer behavior through a variety of qualitative and quantitative methods, including surveys and customer immersion sessions (such as interviews and focus groups). Start with qualitative research that favors immersive and observational tools to connect with the human and uncover the “why” behind context, emotion and both implicit and explicit behavior.

With a better understanding of consumer behavior and needs, journey analytics and journey orchestration will aid continuous improvement of the customer experience, guiding customers toward the right actions to meet their needs in real time. When customers abandon their shopping cart, the journey orchestration engine sends messages via their preferred channel encouraging them to complete their purchase, perhaps by offering a discount. This intelligence prevents sending the wrong message, so customers who are on a customer service journey don’t receive targeted promotions. It improves communication by proactively sending delivery or application status updates.

2. Bring stakeholders along with audience empathy.

Front line, customer-facing employees should participate in customer research and immersion sessions firsthand. For example, when mapping appointment scheduling and reminder journeys, include the front desk employees who speak with patients directly. Patients who receive too many appointment reminders—even after they’ve confirmed their appointment—may become annoyed and complain while checking in.

3. Enable employees to act with empathy at scale.

Businesses need to enable empathy through people, processes and technology. Ritz Carlton empowers its employees to spend up to $2000 per incident to solve customer problems without a manager’s approval. An exhausted, jet-lagged traveler doesn’t have to speak with three people—or pay more—to be upgraded to a better suite when their air conditioning isn’t up to snuff, even if it’s the only category available. Prioritizing customer needs—and relationships—pays off for the luxury hotel brand, whose average customer will spend $250,000 with the Ritz over their lifetime.

Empathy allows employees to create memorable moments and lasting relationships. Identify opportunities to show customers you care about them as people—not just accounts. A bank customer just opened a home loan? Send them a congratulations note.

Chewy, a pet food and supplies e-commerce company known for outstanding CX, sends flowers to customers whose pets have recently died. Those satisfied, grateful Chewy customers often share their stories (and photos of the flowers) on social media. One Chewy customer tweeted about her “wow” experience when she called to ask about returning an unopened bag of food after her dog died. Chewy gave her a full refund, told her to donate the food to a local shelter, and sent flowers, with a note signed by the person she spoke with. That tweet got 750,000 likes and 50,000 re-tweets, and news outlets, including Time and Fortune, covered the story.

Combine MarTech With Empathy for Superior CX and Business Outcomes

While technology collects data and even executes decisioning, empathy provides the essential understanding of customers’ emotions, needs and experiences. By combining technology with an empathetic approach, CX teams create exceptional customer experiences that show you care–and lead to greater loyalty and customer lifetime value. Read the Forrester report, Spark, Nurture and Fire Up Empathy to Drive Innovation, to discover six more strategies to ignite empathy and supercharge CX.

Your customers interact with your brand across multiple platforms every day. While this access to branded content offers fantastic opportunities for your company to connect with your audience, it also begs a larger question: how do you connect these experiences? Creating a connected customer ecosystem can drive powerful insights for your team, build a loyal audience and boost revenue growth.

What Is a Connected Experience?

A connected experience is a collection of seamless, thoughtful interactions with a brand. These interactions are consistent and align with the company mission, giving a customer a clear picture of what the brand represents. 

While you often hear customer experience (CX) discussed in broad terms, connected CX accounts for how customers interact with a brand across multiple platforms and points in time. Connected customer experiences run deeper than brand messaging—they’re about human interaction. While each channel offers something different, the core of the experience should be the same. 

A core value in connected experiences is omnichannel communication. Every platform where a company exists needs to be aware of all other platforms. Brick-and-mortar stores should advertise the sales shared on social media sites and mailers. The website needs to highlight the same new products showcased in the app. Your customer is at the core of this connected ecosystem, and they can easily move from one platform to the next.

Why Do Connected Experiences Matter?

Connected customer experiences lead to three major outcomes. 

Eliminate friction in the customer journey

A brand’s primary responsibility is moving the customer from the top of the sales funnel to the bottom. A disconnected experience introduces more hurdles to the customer journey, making it more challenging to complete the sale. A connected customer experience guides customers through the sales funnel across every platform. 

A customer will receive the same product recommendations through email and social media ads that bring them to the website. Landing pages designed for these products make it easier to add them to the cart. Saved contact and payment information at checkout make completing the purchase simple.

These frictionless customer journeys build loyalty to a brand and keep customers invested in products or services.

Minimize risks of a disconnected experience

Measuring customer experience in silos leads to disjointed data and disorganized technology systems. More technology comes with higher costs, unclear ROI, and extra resources to manage them. Separate data silos require more time to generate meaningful insights, and some may even mislead and misdirect strategy if the analytics are incorrect.

Ultimately, a disconnected experience is costing many organizations more than they realize. Reduce the risks by creating a connected ecosystem of customers and internal teams.

Accelerate business growth

Businesses drive long-term growth by building customer loyalty and cutting unnecessary costs. Connected customer experiences create a positive reputation for a brand and strengthen lead generation efforts. Connected CX keeps customers at the center of organizational processes—and the business reaps the benefits as much as customers.

How Can You Create Connected Customer Experiences?

Your strategies will play an integral role in creating connected customer experiences. 

Empower your team with centralized customer data

Data is the driving force behind personalized CX. Information about ad interactions, shopping history, demographics and much more reveals patterns about customer behaviors. When you inject personalization into 1:1 interactions, your customers feel more connected to your brand than ever.

Building this connection does more than impact the relationships with customers. It meets their expectations. A study from McKinsey reveals 71% of consumers expect personalization from the brands they buy from.

Introducing personalization across every platform goes well beyond sending an email with a person’s name in the subject line. Personalization includes:

• Product recommendations based on past purchases and browsing history
• Special promotions on birthdays and special milestones
• Messages that factor in real-time geolocation
• Calls to action based on a customer’s place in the marketing funnel

Define processes for your customer-facing teams

Connected customer experiences demand more than a cohesive front end. CX teams need to understand the mission and how to best reflect this mission in customer interactions. For instance, there are likely multiple paths for customer service, like phone calls, online chat and email. Define the recommended approach for these interactions. 

Offering key phrases for employees to use can keep interactions consistent. Strong training programs instill confidence in employee-facing team members, ensuring they talk to customers with authority and empathy.

Keep everything human-centered

It’s easy to get swept away by the next revenue-generation strategy. Growing business is important, but focusing solely on financial impact decenters the human experience. When you think about what humans need above all else, revenue growth often follows.

Empathy is a valuable aspect of customer service. However, only 62% of senior executives say they can put themselves in the shoes of their customers, according to a recent Forrester Research survey. When brand leaders lack a strong awareness of their customers as humans, it limits their brands’ ability to create connected customer experiences and build meaningful relationships with buyers.

Whether you’re building an app or rolling out a new product, the team should think about how these projects will affect humans. How will the app support access to customer service? How will the latest product make your customers‘ lives easier? See the difference a human-centered approach will make and build more connected experiences in the process.

Use the right technology

With so many powerful tools available today, it’s easier than ever to create a user-friendly and consistent customer experience across all types of interactions. Consider what customers need in order to make working with your brand more pleasant and accessible. They might be searching for versatile payment methods or an intuitive e-commerce platform. 

The best way to introduce the right technology for customers is to discover where the most friction exists. Reviewing customer support logs can be revealing in this area. Collecting opinions directly from customers by sending a survey to their inboxes right after an interaction can also be helpful. After pinpointing the friction, implement a purpose-built solution.

Create Connected Customer Experiences With CSG

CSG provides an intuitive solution for companies to build connected customer experiences. The customer journey is essential, and we provide the tools to create frictionless journeys no matter the interaction or channel. CSG Xponent is a customer journey orchestration platform that decisionings across the customer lifecycle to create meaningful interactions at every step. Contact CSG to learn more about Xponent.

Business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) audiences involve different sales cycles, expectations and more. But customer experience (CX) is valuable for both. While they may require different strategies, B2C and B2B audiences will build positive perceptions of a brand with CX efforts in place. Learning about these different approaches can help any business streamline its strategy for any target audience.

What Is B2C Customer Experience?

B2C customer experience is the perception that individual consumers have of a brand based on various touchpoints. These touchpoints are any interaction a buyer has with a company, from navigating the website and checking out via a mobile app to interacting with a customer service agent. Strengthening the customer experience involves streamlining these interactions to give customers a more positive perception.

What Is B2B Customer Experience?

B2B customer experience, by definition, isn’t very different from B2C customer experience. Rather than focusing on individual buyers, B2B customer experience is an entire company’s perception of a brand. These customer experiences are still based on touchpoints like talking to a customer service agent or receiving email communications. 

Despite the clear differences between B2C and B2B buyers, B2B audiences still have many touchpoints with a brand. A Forrester study from 2021 revealed that the number of B2B interactions jumped from 17 to 27 from the year prior. This jump is likely related to the overall shift in buyer behaviors during 2020. Most of these interactions were virtual, and these experiences will continue to play a role in modern customer experiences.

Consider These Differences

It’s clear that touchpoints with your brand are an essential part of the customer experience. At the same time, the natures of B2B and B2C audiences are different, and these distinctions can help inform your CX strategy.

Relationship complexity

B2C audiences typically don’t have very complex relationship requirements. Most consumers want a connected customer experience as well as some aspect of personalization in their brand elements. Individual buyers are often looking to align with a brand’s values, too. Recent Harris Poll research reveals that 82% of consumers prefer brand values that line up with their own.

While B2C audiences want more emotional, value-based relationships, their B2B counterparts are often more complicated, likely requiring personal relationships with several stakeholders in a single company. There is also likely a much longer sales cycle. Some B2B sales cycles last for more than a year. These relationships require more time and effort because companies make much bigger investments that affect multiple functions in the organization.

Expectations for collaboration

Collaboration or partnership isn’t something that most B2C audiences prioritize. While individuals might look to your team for answers about products or services, this support is more short-term. B2C audiences want brands that offer a small set of options that appeal to a wide range of customer needs.

For example, a Software as a Service (SaaS) company might provide various pricing packages with different features. This approach gives buyers the chance to find a package that best fits their needs. Providing choices like this will often meet the general needs of a B2C audience. 

B2B audiences, by contrast, typically expect partnership. With the many moving parts in a company, B2B buyers need to know that their unique requirements will be met with turnkey solutions. This need also goes back to those much larger investments companies are making to address their business strategy across the board. The collaborative aspect adds to the value of a product or service.

This expectation of collaboration means some of the most important touchpoints for B2B audiences will be phone calls and meetings with professionals on your team. It requires a very “high touch” approach for B2B interactions, with collaboration playing a large role.

Buying power

Another huge difference between B2C and B2B audiences is who holds the buying power. B2C buyers are the end users and hold all of the buying power. When these customers interact with a brand, their perceptions fully influence whether or not they’ll commit to a purchase. Creating connected customer experiences is critical for B2C audiences to ensure a seamless experience throughout each customer’s journey.

B2B audiences are a different story. You might spend time interacting with multiple people who don’t have total decision-making or buying power within the company. In fact, 63% of purchases have more than four people involved in the buying process. You’ll likely interact with executives, marketers, product experts and more when working with B2B buyers.

Buying power may differ for B2B audiences, but creating connected experiences is still important for these buyers. Every employee’s interactions with a brand paint the company’s overall perception. Intuitive and seamless interactions add value to the customer experience in all contexts.

Omnichannel experiences

For B2C audiences, omnichannel experiences are a big part of brand perception. Consider how you shop from your favorite brands. You likely receive emails, visit a website, use an app and interact on social channels. Since individual buyers don’t rely on collaboration like businesses do, most of their brand perception comes from the omnichannel experience.

A major objective for B2C audiences is connecting the experience across channels to build that positive perception. Connected customer experiences rely on factors like user-friendly design, consistent brand messaging and helpful support through all contact methods. According to McKinsey research, more than half of consumers engage with three to five channels throughout the buyer’s journey.

On the B2B side, the omnichannel experience is still relevant. Even so, the collaborative side of B2B sales often involves more focused channels for communication. For example, a company may prefer collaborating over a video call to discuss services and all the possibilities. 

When optimizing the omnichannel experience for B2C and B2B audiences, data helps identify the most important channels. Which platforms are individual customers using the most? What communication methods do businesses prefer? With this data, understand how to invest in relevant touchpoints to improve customer experiences for both audiences.

Optimize Customer Experience for Any Audience With CSG

Whether your business is B2B or B2C, your audience wants a brand that understands them. CSG offers tools designed to engage your audience, map to the customer journey and build a deep understanding of buyers.

CSG Xponent has an array of features that make it easy for you to create connected customer experiences for B2C. Use customer journey management to find the best communication solutions at every stage in the marketing funnel. Build engagement channels, like conversational AI and MMS alerts, to keep your customer looped in on their favorite platforms. Create data-rich profiles of every buyer to understand their habits and personalize all interactions.

CSG Encompass specializes in B2B interactions, streamlining many onboarding and management procedures. You can onboard new partners more efficiently, allowing for quick collaboration. The solution supports complex order volumes, letting you quote and process orders correctly the first time. The unified platform manages all order cycle components and is scalable for business growth.

Xponent and Encompass are powerful tools, and they can take your business to the next level. Get in touch with us today to see the possibilities.