Telco customer experience: Delivering hyper-personalization with DPI-driven insights

In the age of AI, data has become a key differentiator, separating thriving setting thriving businesses apart from the rest. The growing reliance on data is pervasive across every industry, and telecoms is no exception. Data-driven decisions are shaping how operators manage their networks, revenues and customers, and how they respond to challenges and competition.

An increasingly popular data-driven approach adopted by operators today is hyper-personalization. By utilizing a broad set of data attributes that describe the customer and their environment, operators are curating their interfaces, services and offerings to match the exact needs of their customers at any given time. Hyper-personalization is a powerful tool to drive service uptake and engagement. Pioneered by the likes of Amazon through its alternative product suggestion feature, hyper-personalization has evolved into a popular trend among businesses and a baseline expectation among customers. This shift is driving operators to adopt these tailored strategies to enhance customer experience (CX), boost ARPUs, and strengthen their bottom line.

How traffic intelligence shapes customer ‘context’

Hyper-personalization approaches are based on customer ‘context’. This ‘context’ is derived from customer information such as gender, age, address, education, occupation, preferences, plan types and spending. This information enables operators to develop user classes that share common attributes and to tailor plans or offers that appeal to each class. For example, emerging professionals in a city are likely to respond to an offer that includes free podcast streaming during peak commute hours.

Deep packet inspection for continuous QoE tracking

A more powerful approach to hyper-personalization is micro-targeting, where instead of tackling an entire class of subscribers, operators observe individual behavior and develop their offers on the spot. To support this, operators need real-time insights into the applications, networks and devices in use, enabling them to tailor information and services to their customers and identify potential security threats. This is why operators are turning to advanced traffic intelligence tools such as deep packet inspection (DPI). Next-gen DPI engines such as R&S®PACE 2 and R&S®vPACE by ipoque extract packet metadata such as packet size, count and timings while identifying URLs, encryption techniques, session, flow and device information. Using statistical, behavioral and heuristic analysis, the DPI software by ipoque is also able to accurately classify packets by applications, protocols and services. The critical data needed to support microtargeting is delivered by these insights and by AI-driven predictions of various traffic, user and network attributes, including subscriber quality of experience (QoE) and network quality of service (QoS).

Creating personalized experiences

By leveraging these insights, operators can automate highly targeted responses to customer needs. For example, as soon as a slight deterioration in QoS is detected, operators can move a subscriber to a higher tier or deliver an alert with recommendations for an improved experience. At the same time, real-time application awareness enables operators to identify specific applications, such as Netflix, and observe a user’s experience on different services like browsing, in-app interactions, video streaming and movie downloading. Combining this with historical analysis, operators can shift resources based on a subscriber’s content preferences and ensure a seamless application experience. Operators can also capitalize on this information to upsell application-specific offers such as time-limited passes or zero-rated access. Additionally, operators can translate this analysis into innovative custom plans, for example, unique application bundles that feature a subscriber’s most used applications, delivering what they expect to see.

Application awareness provided by DPI also forms the basis for identifying a customer’s preferences for complementary or value-added services. For instance, a customer who visits online shopping platforms regularly will respond to vouchers associated with these platforms. This ensures merchant tie-ups have a strong customer appeal and are effective in boosting the brand experience.

Rewards that are worth the loyalty

Operator loyalty programs and bonus schemes also benefit significantly from DPI traffic analysis. Given that these schemes are aimed at combating churn and improving CX, rewards that fail to resonate with the expectations of customers will jeopardize efforts towards these goals. DPI traffic analysis, which tracks user behavior over time, can be used to design programs that are aligned with each subscriber’s specific interests, mobility patterns and spending habits. For example, unlimited data usage for a week every six months entices travel enthusiasts who post heavily on social media during their trips. Similarly, for vloggers, bonus points that can be redeemed for free live streaming can convince them to stay longer with an operator brand.

Location-based offers

Providing deals that are based on customer physical locations is another aspect of hyper-personalization. DPI software such as R&S®PACE 2 and R&S®vPACE collect IP addresses, network handover information, cell tower information and access point names (APNs). This information can be used to improve QoS strategies, for example, by alerting subscribers of Wi-Fi offloading options at adjacent Wi-Fi hotspots. Similarly, location-based information can be used to trigger offers relating to partner merchants. For instance, as soon as a subscriber steps into a mall, and connects to a small cell / distributed antenna system (DAS) access point, the subscriber can be notified of ongoing deals at retail outlets, eateries and entertainment centers in the building. These offers can be curated further by using built-in rules based on a customer’s personal profile, such as gender and age.

New devices, new plans

Operators can leverage data transmission patterns between a device and the network to identify the device types used by their customers and use this information to optimize connectivity and content. This saves device storage space and bandwidth consumption, allowing users to consume more data at a lower charge while reserving the capacity of their devices. The information can also be used to cross-sell latest device bundles.

In addition, by using application usage patterns, operators can promote personal IoT devices and services such as LTE/5G powered wearables and connected car plans. These cross promotions can also be expanded to enrich triple play or quad play services by converged operators, for instance, the cross promotion of fixed broadband upgrades or smart home automation solutions.

Context is key – Reducing frustration and elevating user experience with DPI insights

Telecom customers are usually quick to blame the operator for issues they face, despite these issues stemming from factors outside the operator’s control. Device storage limitations, a smartphone infested with malware, extremely heavy file transfers, a weak radio signal strength due to local obstructions, third-party firewalls and overages from international roaming, are examples of such situations. For care agents responding to issues raised by disgruntled customers, DPI data enables AI-based diagnostic tools to detect the contributing causes, enabling these agents to remediate these situations with contextual suggestions and alerts. For example, DPI analysis that compares current data usage against past norms can help operators trigger warnings before a bill shock takes place.

In short, DPI’s ability to dig deep into the network allows operators to understand the ‘what’, ‘how’, ‘when’, ‘why’ and ‘where’ of every subscriber action. This establishes the context of each subscriber, thus empowering operators with the information they need to deliver highly personalized conversations, offers and suggestions. This in turn leads to improved engagement and helps operators accomplish their CX goals with greater success.

Ready to enhance your telecom customer experience through hyper-personalization? Contact us today and learn how DPI-driven insights can transform your strategy and bring your offers to the next level!