digital commerce transformation for communication service

Bridging the BSS/Commerce gap to accelerate… everything

• Grow Digital Revenue• Increase Agility • Decrease Costs

Digital Commerce Transformationfor Communication Service Providers

Healthcare

0 10080604020

Prrofessional Services

Retail

Hospitality, Travel, Restaurents

Manufacturing

Automotive & Transportation

Financial Services

Construction & Engineering

Consumer Services

Insurance

IT & Software

Banking

Media

IT Services

Telecommunications

62

58

54

53

51

49

46

45

42

42

41

37

34

33

24

2 Digital Commerce Transformation for Communication Service Providers salesforce.com

These are hugely exciting times for communications service providers.

Mobile devices, apps and experiences have woven themselves into the very fabric of modern society—for both consumers and businesses alike. And the advent of 5G, AR/VR, and the Internet of Things all promise a new leap in mobile potential.

Telcos bring enormous strengths into this new era—with millions of customers, oceans of data and high-capacity, next-gen networks are ready to carry the next wave of innovation.

But there’s one area where telcos significantly lag behind almost every other industry: customer experience. With an average Net Promoter Score® of 24, telcos, cable and internet providers hold lower industry ratings than even banking, with it’s NPS average of 37.1

Although consumer buying worked fine, transactional commerce is a major contributor to the problem. Despite advances in network reliability and customer support, for business and small office/home office customers (SoHo) telcos are still notoriously difficult to buy from online.

It’s time for CSPs to become world-class retailers

1. Customer Gauge NPS Benchmarks Report, 2018

— Average Net Promoter Scores by Industry Customer Gauge NPS Benchmarks Report, 2018

http://salesforce.com

https://www.salesforce.com/

https://customergauge.com/benchmarks-report/

Commerce: the next big opportunity


In serving both consumers and small businesses, digital commerce has become an increasingly important channel for CSPs.

But commitment to the channel has varied widely—falling somewhere between simple, transactional web shops and elaborate, custom-coded adaptations of the generic retail platforms.

Most CSPs recognised that they needed to improve their digital commerce game—for their customers and for their own revenues. But the COVID crisis lit a fire under the issue. Lockdowns forced high-street stores to close, shutting off this critical consumer and SMB channel. And up-market, B2B sales meetings stopped too.

Overnight, digital commerce became the most important part of every customer journey—a shift that’s unlikely to reverse in a post-COVID world. Through all the confusion, one fact is clear:

“The winners in today’s telco market will be the brands that master the entire digital commerce experience; the ones that get great at retailing.” Sean Knotts, Senior Ecommerce Manager, Sonos



Big, bad barriers


The will to become great online retailers sounds great in a strategy document. But in the real world, telcos have serious barriers to overcome—many of which are unique to CSPs.

We summarise these barriers below, but their impact on commerce is impossible to ignore: today, merchandisers and marketers are hamstrung by slow, inflexible legacy platforms, disconnected from back-end OSS (where the products are built).

As a result, many of the things we’ve all come to expect in modern commerce experiences—from personalisation to a persistent, cross-channel shopping cart—aren’t available when we’re buying smartphones, accessories, service plans, internet packages and entertainment subscriptions.

The customer service experience struggles with the same problems, with service agents denied the 360-degree view of each customer, in context.

These problems fuel all those infamous customer service stories—where someone wasted hours on the phone, frustrated because they had to repeat the same information for the hundredth time.

Today, customers use an average of eight touch-points and 90% expect consistent interactions across all channels. Getting it right has never mattered more, especially when a single bad experience can colour the whole relationship.

Lost business, revenue and customers are big penalties to pay for inconsistent or uninformed interactions.



A new model emerges


This is about the potential for an enormous leap in the digital commerce experience for CSPs. It outlines a new commerce model that’s optimised for CSPs—based on a deep integration between BSS, CRM and Commerce.

The result is a new era of rich marketing and merchandising that delivers relevant, personalised commerce experiences across every channel; an era that empowers product managers and merchandisers to innovate freely and get new offers to market almost instantly.

In short: this is big.

66% of high-performing companies are replacing in-store experiences with digital ones. — State of Commerce report,

Salesforce Research, 2020

37% of telcos surveyed earn the majority of their revenue from ecommerce. — State of Commerce report,





The barriers to great retailing facing every CSP

As a CSP, your customers now expect you to deliver great commerce experiences.

The good news: it’s pretty clear what great looks like. The trail has already been blazed by digital-native retailers like Amazon and mega-brands pioneering direct-to-consumer models like Adidas, Disney and Sonos.

Experiences that were remarkable only a few years ago are now standard for the pioneers:

• Commerce is hyper-personalised Reflecting insight from every interaction

• Shopping moves seamlessly across channels With a persistent cart that follows you like a personal shopper

• Mobile experiences remove all friction With intuitive apps that reflect mobile-first UX ideas

• Merchandising is timely and informed With smart, empathetic cross- and upselling

In short: the target is clear for every CSP.

What’s holding you back?




The fact that the ‘insanely great’ commerce experience is well-understood doesn’t mean it’s easy to achieve. In fact, CSPs face an interlocking set of challenges—four big barriers—that make world-class commerce uniquely and exceptionally challenging:

Four big barriers

Inherent complexity

CSPs sell a complex mix of services, devices, accessories, connections and add-ons.

Quad play is evolving into the infinite aisle—with thousands of permutations of devices, contracts, plans, subscriptions, home services, security and even financial services.

Many are interdependent—with, for example, the new Samsung only available on a certain plan and with specific accessories. To make things even more complex: the telco product catalog never stands still—not even for a day.

Fragmentation and silos

Over the last decade, each channel—and often each line of business—created its own tech stack and data store. As a result, there’s no single view of the customer.

That was manageable when customer journeys were simple. But they’re not anymore: today’s customer journeys are always multi-channel. So silos are crippling to customer experience (CX).

Dramatic spikes in demand

Few retailers see the kind of demand spikes that are normal for CSPs: the launch of the new iPhone; the first-ever live stream of Hamilton…

Two minutes of downtime for a book retailer might hurt. But 30 seconds of downtime on iPhone Day could cost millions.

The back-to-front disconnect

Maybe the biggest barrier of all for CSPs is the disconnect between back-office systems and the front-end duo of CRM and Commerce.

Today, the place where products, plans, bundles and rules are created is divorced from the place where marketing and retailing happens. The result isn’t just an inconvenient wall between product managers and merchandisers, it’s the loss of sales to competitors who get to market faster.

2

1 3

4

Until recently, these four barriers were enough to keep CSPs from upping their digital commerce game (it helped that every other CSP suffered from the same challenges).

Today, the perfect storm of customer expectations, high-street limitations and multichannel complexity mean you can’t just accept the status quo. It simply costs too much.




The BSS / Commerce gap

And its many penalties

The disconnect between your BSS/ CRM and your Commerce platform carries unsustainable costs—for customers, product managers, merchandisers, marketers and the entire business:

• An inconsistent, disjointed customer experience

Even if one or two channels are getting better, there’s no consistency of offer, pricing, or shopping experience—much less a persistent cart that crosses channels with the customer.

• Unacceptable delays in getting offers to market

The manual, error-prone handover from product managers to merchandisers means copying new rules and relationships into even a single channel—then climbing the mountain again for each subsequent channel.

• Poor, if any personalisation

A single channel might reflect the customer’s past experience in that channel—but it won’t reflect the whole customer journey. So you lose the opportunity to make super-relevant offers everywhere.

• Commerce is not CSP-optimised

This one’s a killer: commerce platforms built for generic retailing or marketing experience platforms are simply not optimised for the catalogs, complexities and interdependencies of the telco world.

This ties your merchandisers hands behind their backs—they’re forced to over-simplify offers and campaigns, losing the uplift that depends on nuance.

• Missed B2B and SMB opportunities

SMBs have come to expect the same frictionless, high-quality commerce experiences that consumers demand. But as business offers get more customised, the gap between BSS and commerce front-end experiences create barriers that SMBs refuse to accept. Disjointed CPQ and rudimentary order management make it hard to deliver the ‘high-touch meets consumer-grade CX’ that businesses demand.

All of these penalties have simply been the reality of digital commerce for CSPs. The fundamental gap between BSS/CRM and Commerce was hard-coded in the infrastructure.

That’s all changing, thanks to a fundamental, liberating integration.




A new model that bridges the BSS / Commerce gap

The issues summarised above point to an inescapable conclusion: the CSP industry needs a whole new go-to-market platform: that starts with a digital, agile, cloud-based BSS and extends to 360-degree CRM and a CSP-optimised commerce platform.

It’s a model for every CSP that unites the entire customer journey from first awareness to order to ongoing support, upgrades and cross-sales—all invisibly guided by an integrated stack that bridges back-end OSS functions with a digital BSS/CRM and Commerce capabilities.

And instead of a massive, high-risk ‘rip and replace’ program, it’s a modular approach that creates a self-funded roadmap: the early wins pay for the next investments. The concept

The idea behind the model is simple: combine a telco-specific BSS with the rich, customisable Commerce Cloud—on the foundations of Salesforce’s #1 CRM platform.

What sounds like a technical integration is actually a business revolution, giving CSPs one source of truth for customers and the product/tech catalog; a consistent, personalised commerce experience everywhere (whether on web, mobile app, kiosk or social media); and the ability to scale up for any spike in demand.

The breakthrough

A big deal.

The new model is made possible by Salesforce’s acquisition of Vlocity, the leading cloud-based BSS. For the first time, the telco-specific middle office —Communications Cloud—meets the market-leading Commerce Cloud and the wider Customer360 vision of Salesforce CRM.



THE BREAKTHROUGH


The principles

If you were designing a full-stack, customer-driven commerce stacks for CSPs, it would have to have these qualities:

Vertically Integrated

One integrated ecosystem, from BSS to CRM to Commerce. So you don’t have to build products, rules and processes, then manually move them all over into each channel’s storefront or campaign builder.

Catalog-first Design (or Architecture)

One source of truth for all products and technologies in one, telco-optimised catalog that talks to your CRM system, EPC, CPQ, CLM and Order Management.

Industry-specific

With workflows, processes, rules and standard integrations (like TM Forum and MEF) built in.

API-First

So you create once and publish to all channels, reaching all customers, everywhere. With a reference storefront available out-of-the-box and a headless approach for kiosks, bespoke apps, and whatever comes next.

CRM centric

Plugging into all the benefits of the Customer 360 vision. So you can personalise everywhere and gather insights from every interaction.

Modular

Letting you start where you are, pick off the best quick-win use cases, then progress along your chosen, self-funded roadmap.

The core integrations for all of this are already available. And a series of richer, deeper integrations will deliver more and more value with every release.

Consumer digital spending grew

55% year-over-year in Q3 2020. — State of Commerce report,


55% of companies surveyed said digital channels would provide more than 50% of B2B revenue in three years. — State of Commerce report,





The end-to-end digital commerce experience

The new Digital Commerce for CSPs combines the consumer-grade Commerce capabilities of B2C Commerce Cloud with the powerful Enterprise Product Catalog, CPQ and Order Management capabilities of Communications Cloud, designed specifically for the Communications industry.

The new customer journey




For telcos and CSPs, digital commerce is fast becoming a primary driver of growth. The new imperative is clear: get great at digital commerce everywhere your customers find you. That means the ability to:

• Drive down the cost of acquisition

• Increase customer satisfaction and NPS scores

• Grow digital revenues

• Decrease costs

• Increase agility

• Get offers to market fast

• Deliver great, consistent commerce experiences everywhere

• Create seamless customer journeys with persistence

• Scale up for spikes and back down in-between

• Easily add new commerce channels

• Avoid duplicate data entry and jumping between systems

In short, do all the things you know you need—but struggle to do now: from personalisation, and infinite aisle catalogs to persistent carts and cart remarketing.

Seize your juiciest opportunities

The advent of 5G, gaming, content streaming, the Internet of Things, AR/VR and AI-powered apps and services create enormous opportunities for every service provider.

But the battle for customers in this new landscape has never been so fierce. The incumbent CSPs, the Big Tech players, OTT services, new disruptors and innovative startups… they all want to offer the same things to the same people.

The winners in this competitive new world will be the brands that rise to the challenges of digital commerce in a multi-channel world.

We’re convinced that the key to this is the integration of back-, middle- and front-office in a way that’s optimised for the unique, highly specialised business you’re in.

It’s time to close the gap between your BSS and Commerce platforms.

We’d love to show you exactly what that looks like

This is the new retailing for CSPs

88% of high-performing companies report they’re investing more in contextual commerce or embedded commerce experiences. — State of Commerce report,




ABOUT SALESFORCE


Deliver the personalised experiences your customers expect by using the integrated CRM platform that we call Salesforce Customer 360. It provides powerful, connected products for improving your marketing, sales, commerce, service, IT, and more.

Commerce Cloud

Commerce Cloud is an ecommerce platform from Salesforce. It’s comprised of a portfolio of products including Salesforce B2C Commerce, to deliver end-to-end unified commerce. Commerce Cloud powers headless experiences, delivers rich merchandising tools powered by AI, and is connected to the worlds #1 CRM. It lets companies create personalised and intelligent unified buying experiences across multiple channels including mobile, social, web, and store.

Communications Cloud

Communications Cloud is an award-winning suite of digital sales and service solutions designed specifically for CSPs to help them increase agility, rapidly launch innovative services, decrease order fallout and sales cycle times—while delivering a differentiated customer experience that drives revenue.

Customer 360

Customer 360 is the world’s #1 CRM. Increase NPS scores with our end-to-end solution. Connect to your customers in a more intelligent way by uniting sales, service, marketing, commerce, IT, and analytics. All powered by our global community of Trailblazers.

Further reading

State of Commerce

Insights from nearly 1,400 commerce leaders and 1 billion consumers and business buyers.

State of the Connected Customer

Insights from 15,000+ global consumers and business buyers on a new era of customer engagement

Salesforce Solutions for Communications companies

Discover new communications-specific innovations, built for today’s challenges.

We bring companies and customers together.

23% In fact brands with Commerce Cloud have seen +23% average yoy same site sales growth *May 2020 Salesforce Platform Metrics



https://www.salesforce.com/uk/products/commerce-cloud/ecommerce/

https://vlocity.com/industries/communications-cloud

https://www.salesforce.com/uk/form/commerce/state-of-commerce/?ve=g-recaptcha-response

https://www.salesforce.com/resources/research-reports/state-of-the-connected-customer/

https://www.salesforce.com/solutions/industries/communications/overview/

digital commerce transformation for communication service

Documents