What is Total Experience (TX), and Why is it the Key to Enhanced Telecom Customer Experience (CX)

According to Gartner's “Top Strategic Technology Trends for 2021: Total Experience”, total experience is one of the top trends for 2021 and beyond. In the report, Brian Burke says the organizations that enable TX strategy will be the leaders when it comes to delivering customer satisfaction indicators over the next three years.

What is total experience in telecom customer experience (CX)? 

One may get confused with the terms customer experience (CX), user experience (UX), employee experience (EX), and now “total experience”, which seem to be a blend of all the others. This is the way to understand how to improve CX in telecoms.

The meaning and types of telecom experience:

• Customer experience (CX)  

Telecom CX focuses on customers. This includes the way they perceive the company, and their overall experience in terms of all physical and digital touchpoints. Digital CX for telecom is a strategy for fulfilling requirements during each customer’s online journey.

• Employee experience (EX)

EX is very similar to the customer experience, but the recipient is different – the employee instead of the customer. Here, what’s counts is how they’re treated, whether the processes in the organization are clear, and if day-to-day tools help them become a superstar in their field of work, etc.

• User experience (UX) 

UX is more technology-related, and may be applied to customers and employees, and their interaction with the company’s tools and platforms. 

• Total experience (TX) 

What is total experience? It is a blend, or a hybrid, of how people perceive the company and how they are supported by technology. Total experience blends all these points of view and treats perception of the company holistically. Obviously, customer experience lies at the center of the company’s interests, and is essential, but improving it is linked directly to user and employee experiences.

Total experience (TX) in the context of customer satisfaction in telecommunications companies

For telecom companies, many of whom operate with legacy tools, and where employees often have to work with various systems to complete a single task, improving employee experience is especially important.

This is even more critical now, when telcos (and other companies), face new challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting in the need to provide remote working for employees.

The pandemic has drastically changed the way interactions are handled, externally among employees and customers, and internally between employees. It has impacted customer service processes significantly, and created the need to look for the right tools, so that front and back-office teams can support the customer seamlessly. 

Total experience technology – keys to improving and expanding CX in telecom

Personalization

Most of us have at some point probably received a renewal offer from our connectivity provider, promising a “great and cheap package”, containing bundled TV, Internet and telephone services. Probably, we just wanted more Internet data, operating a little faster. In order to obtain this, instead of talking to the salesperson who contacted us, we have to contact another employee at the customer center. This is where total experience is strategy comes in. With the right tool to support offer personalization, the overall results are better, increasing customer satisfaction and CX in telecom within a one-call resolution.

Automation and simplification of processes  

Total experience automation helps employees and customers, and leads to fewer errors in orders. Therefore, it improves telco customer experience. A good example of automated processes is when an interaction switches from chat or IVR to an agent, and the employee has all the information (troubleshooting, chat scripts, etc.) they need to continue the service (instead of asking the same questions that were asked in online messaging). Another thing is the assignment process, where the customer gets transferred to the right employee, instead of having to speak with many others first.

Journey digitization

The customer’s digital journey is one of the pillars of development for vendors and service providers. Improving digital CX for telecom also means transferring activities online, and making them easy to use thanks to intuitive interfaces. This also enables the potential to reuse customer-friendly digital tools for employees.

AI/ML-powered technology

Artificial intelligence and machine learning provide various new possibilities within EX and CX in telecoms. Services such as next-best-offer or next-best-action are focused more on end-users and customers, but they also allow beneficial technology to be implemented for back-office users – especially in regards to operations which are ultra-frustrating and erroneous for the employee, and too complex for simple, commonly used algorithms.

A great example of such actions is matching the payments from various sources to the invoices, or verifying invoice errors, where automation provides some truly amazing results.

Total user experience is about delivering excellent employee and customer experience

In order for a company to perform well and be perceived positively by the end-customer, it must also be recognized accordingly by its employees.

How can you improve CX in telecoms? One way is to increase total experience. It is all about the people and the technology that supports their interactions, whether we consider customers, employees, or users.