More than once I’ve heard senior execs in large operators describe their roles as “shovelling coal”. They are so busy that they are struggling to prioritise.

Telcos as much as other capex-heavy companies tend to be pretty unwieldy organisations. This is where, often valid, industry “frameworks” come into being – templates of “what good looks like”, provided by consultants or industry bodies, often with validity and the assumption that everything is possible, but also assuming that pretty much everything has equal weighting. Of course, everything is possible to some extent but meantime, the coal needs to be shovelled or existing customers will churn.

The next key concern we often hear from C-level execs is how to break out of the combined cycle of coal-shovelling and reacting to competitive change in the most effective manner.

The marketing team at Openet often refer to a basic truth: In cognitive psychology and decision theory, loss aversion refers to people’s tendency to prefer avoiding losses to acquiring equivalent gains: It is better to not lose $5 that you already have than to find $5. 

In other words, in terms of customer-centricity perhaps the best place to start is by ensuring damage is not done and current customer value is appreciated and acknowledged in real time. Taking this further: We advise that these execs could be looking to their real-time customer enablement and monetisation as taking the pulse, in real-time of customers’ sense of control and value. If you can also allow users to engage directly and self-serve with amazing new 5G services in real time and enable them to feel in control, from concept (service discovery) through to (of course) payment, then this is the brilliantly simple yet often neglected basis for an ultra-competitive service offering.

Meanwhile, telco personnel and AI can be empowered to have a single, convergent view and the ability to spin up, test, launch and monitor services in minutes or hours from a single, compatible toolset. Perhaps most importantly, it will allow you to set a priority for your business that not only averts losses, but delivers dramatic results in the form of effective upsell, cross-sell, monetisation and OpEx control. At Openet, we’ve seen efficiency improvements amongst our clients in terms of service launch of over 70%.

This places online charging as a focal-point, at the heart of the customer experience. It’s why at Openet, we firmly believe online charging is the “beating heart of BSS” – an “offer engine” that can be seen as a powerful priority for service providers. It can be both the pulse of the relationship with the end user and indicator, as well as driver, of the overall health of the business. It is why we at Openet know that online charging will continue to grow in relative importance as 5G expands in both complexity as well as the enabler of ever more diverse and enriched user experiences. 

Some telcos will continue to shovel coal as we head to 5G and that is fine. Others will recalibrate and evolve their coal mines into diamond mines. Critical to that evolution will be prioritisation and the right tools at the heart of it all.

 

Openet have announced their latest charging product release that covers 5G CHF and CCS. Click here for more information.

For more information on 5G, charging and priorities of service providers head to Openet’s head to: Openet Industry Insights or contact us at: info@openet.com