With steadily declining or stagnant profits over the past 30 years and increasing annual operating expenditures (opex), telecommunications carriers (“telcos”) are faced with a financial tug of war between optimizing for cost-effectiveness and increasing revenues. One place they can turn to increase labor efficiency, reduce costs and create new revenue opportunities is their retail hub.

Despite the increasing opex challenges, retail is still a popular destination for customers who want to engage with their mobile service providers. According to internal MCE survey data, 64 percent of customers visited a retail store in 2023, and nearly 40 percent of consumers still prefer to make purchases in a physical store.

As telcos become increasingly revenue-driven, retail must evolve into a hub that prioritizes sales. At the forefront of this shift are frontline sales representatives, positioned to upsell at each appropriate opportunity. However, they are often bogged down by service-related inquiries around device care, such as warranty or insurance claims and troubleshooting technical issues that are redundant, time-consuming and detract from revenue-generating efforts.

This ultimately leads to missed revenue opportunities, lower productivity and increased customer dissatisfaction, as reps have less time to focus on upselling.

What telcos are missing is a cohesive strategy combined with the right tools to achieve three goals:

  1. Deflect unnecessary device care or troubleshooting inquiries that could be resolved independently by customers.
  2. Streamline and expedite existing customer processes through standardization.
  3. Identify new upsell opportunities.

A digital-first approach is essential to empower customers to manage their device issues independently while enabling frontline representatives to have a comprehensive understanding of each customer’s mobile device lifecycle disposition and the customer journey. To do that, telcos must provide customers and frontline representatives with:

  • A robust set of digital tools to evaluate a mobile device (i.e. diagnostic performance) and gather data (device intelligence).
  • Digital infrastructure (dDLM) to connect between engagement channels (i.e. on-device, retail or call centers) and customer device history from previous journeys.

By combining dDLM and device intelligence, telcos can enable customers to resolve issues remotely, conserving valuable retail service resources. Should a customer opt to come into the store for device care, the service process can be streamlined by eliminating repetitive steps because the representative has access to critical intelligence on a customer’s previous engagements (device history). Retail representatives can benefit from having the tools to source mobile device intelligence, which helps them to determine the best selling opportunities in each scenario. We can look at insurance attachment as a powerful example.

One in five customers will need device care help annually, with 41 percent preferring to visit retail for this kind of problem. At the same time, customers who receive contextual upsell offers when they have a device problem – such as insurance, warranty or trade-in options – are much more satisfied, leading to a 6-7-point increase in NPS. Empowered with digital mobile device assessment tools, retail representatives can quickly diagnose or troubleshoot problems.

This can either resolve the issue more efficiently, freeing representatives to focus on other tasks, or turn it into an upsell opportunity. Representatives can then leverage insights gathered during troubleshooting, combined with on-file CRM information and customer device and journey history, to make smart upsell recommendations. Ultimately, this aligns each retail interaction with sales goals while also improving customer satisfaction.

By adopting a digital-first approach that seamlessly connects with retail, telcos can see enhancements in three key areas:

  1. Increased customer satisfaction: Customers can resolve issues on their own without needing to visit a retail store, boosting satisfaction, while retail visits are streamlined to avoid repeated steps, increasing NPS.
  2. Enhanced retail labor efficiency: Retail representatives spend less time resolving device care issues and more time on upsell opportunities, maximizing the value of operational expenditure on retail.
  3. Improved revenue generation: With digital intelligence-sourcing tools, reps can identify upsell opportunities throughout the customer’s mobile device lifecycle, driving more revenue and supporting sales incentive programs.

A platform approach is essential to seamlessly integrate dDLM with on-device and retail digital tools, enabling streamlined and efficient retail operations. MCE’s team is equipped with 20 years of industry knowledge and technological know-how to drive tangible and measurable change in telco retail operations. Discover how MCE’s dDLM platform and retail solutions can drive a customer-centric transformation.