Please hold: The AI Revolution in Telecom
In the Customer Experience Industry, there’s a particular area that was seen as too traditional: telecommunications. Fortunately, telecommunications companies are finally embracing artificial intelligence, something that could transform their reputation. Recent data shows that customer frustration in telecom revolves around a familiar set of complaints—technical issues, billing problems, and poor service quality. The solution may lie not in hiring more staff but in deploying smarter systems.
The telecom industry has long struggled with customer satisfaction. When one-third of all customer contacts involve technical issues and another significant portion centers on billing disputes, it's clear that traditional approaches aren't cutting it. And customers, when faced with a bad experience, don’t hesitate to change to a competitor.
What makes this particularly interesting is that the industry is actually ahead of the curve in adopting AI solutions. According to the recent whitepaper “Dialing into telecoms CX”, from Foundever, 56% of global telecom providers have already, to some degree, integrated AI and automation into their operations.
So, the real question isn't whether telecom companies should implement AI but how they can do it effectively. Self-service options and 24/7 chatbots are essential components of modern customer service. When implemented correctly, these tools can handle high volumes of inquiries while maintaining great understanding rates—as high as 95%, according to one case study highlighted in the whitepaper.
However, telecoms need to be strategic about AI implementation by creating a symbiotic relationship between technology and people. The most successful approaches treat AI as a foundation that supports rather than replaces the human touch.
The advice for these companies is clear and could even be applied to other industries: identify where AI can enhance customer journeys, ensure seamless integration with existing CRM systems, monitor performance, maintain a balance between automation and human interaction, and involve customer experience professionals in implementation decisions.
Companies that embrace AI thoughtfully will likely pull ahead of competitors, while those that implement it poorly or ignore it altogether risk falling further behind in customer satisfaction rankings. The technology exists, but the challenge now is implementation.
As for customers, this shift could finally mean an end to endless hold times and repetitive explanations of the same problem to different representatives. For telecom companies, it offers a path to improved customer loyalty. It's a rare win-win situation in an industry that really needs one.
Opinion by Monika Röhr-Łukasik, Regional Director of Foundever in Poland and Bulgaria