Change is nothing new in the world of communications and media providers. Once limited to telephones and cable TV, the industry has shifted toward offering a variety of digital services over the last few decades, from widespread broadband and cellular access to new streaming platforms.
And of course, consumer expectations have changed dramatically: people now expect to be able to access all the news, entertainment, and information they need using a variety of connected devices and while on the go, at home, and at work.
It’s not just this rapid pace of innovation that makes the world of communications service providers (CSPs) so unique. CSPs also need to think more broadly than many other companies when it comes to optimizing their digital experiences. While most ecommerce companies focus on getting people to hit “add to cart” and checking out, CSPs must recognize that the customer journey entails a lot more than signing up for a new cell phone plan or Internet connection.
In reality, consumers are constantly interacting with the services they signed up for post-purchase, whether they’re choosing a new show to watch, checking their data usage for the month, adding a new line of service (and a new phone) to the existing family plan, or replacing a broken mobile phone.
Photo by Daria Nepriakhina on UnsplashWhat does this all mean for CSPs?
Optimizing toward the “buy” button isn’t enough. CSPs need to consider every single interaction a prospect or customer makes, and figure out how to optimize every aspect of the experience.
That’s far from an easy task, but it’s crucial for CSPs that want to stand out. Consumers generally see companies in the communications and media space as providing fungible services and, in the absence of a clearly compelling customer experience (CX), tend to pick CSPs based on price. CX can seriously move the needle: a 2018 report from Temkin Group (now Qualtrics XM) confirmed that even moderate improvements in CX resulted in $775 million in additional revenue over three years for 318 companies across 20 industries.
How should CSPs optimize?
Every product manager and marketer knows how important constant experimentation is to improve the customer experience. That said, the way you experiment also matters a great deal.
A/B and multivariate testing tools are a good starting point, but they just don’t work at a speed and scale necessary to see significant results in a short period of time. And when it comes to all the opportunities CSPs have to optimize across mobile apps, websites, and server-side environments, traditional testing is simply inadequate.
Traditional testing leaves too large a gap between your great ideas and your ability to harvest gains from them. Photo by Joshua Sukoff on Unsplash
That’s why CSPs serious about meaningfully improving the customer experience need to look past start-and-stop testing and embrace continuous optimization.
The results speak for themselves
Evolv was built with continuous optimization at its foundation. We’ve been privileged to work with some of the world’s top CSPs, in the US and beyond, and they’ve seen outstanding results by deploying continuous optimization. For example:
- 1 of the top 5 US CSPs ran two initial projects which resulted in over $100M in incremental online sales. The first project ran for 24 days, tested over 9,000 experiences, and yielded 182,000 additional orders; on a yearly basis, that means $37 million in additional revenue. The second project yielded another $18 million increase in revenue.
- 1 of the top 3 US wireless providers benefited from a 9.4% increase in purchases from the winning headband design alone and benefited from an overall increase of $8.48M in annual sales.
- A large global CSP says: "We selected Evolv because of the platform’s unique ability to identify winning end-to-end digital experiences that both meet the ever-changing needs of our customers and deliver growth.”
Download the Guide
We created The Complete Guide to Experimentation and Optimization for Communications and Media Service Providers to help companies in this space better understand the relationship between their marketing campaigns, the digital assets within them, and how their customers engage in the full funnel experience.
This ebook is designed specifically for CSPs looking for actionable strategies that will empower their company to deliver the best customer experience possible.
You’ll learn:
- Why it’s about more than testing. We’ll show you how to properly approach testing, and why the way you test is more important than ever.
- Some of the unique CX challenges that exist in your industry. We’ve outlined some of the CX challenges you may encounter when implementing an optimization strategy.
- What fundamentals you need to consider before starting. Learn more about what a successful optimization strategy requires, how to get started on the right foot, and where to focus your efforts.
- Why creating a culture of experimentation is essential. Experiments are more than just one-and-done efforts. Companies should learn to embrace continuous optimization to stay ahead of the curve.
- How machine learning can accelerate your optimization strategy. See how other companies are leveraging machine learning to generate positive changes in their CX strategies.
Download the ebook now to learn how experimentation and continuous optimization can help you improve the customer experience, generate more sales, and build brand loyalty.
