In this series of weblogs, A Slice of TADSummit, we review some of the important themes from TADSummit EMEA Americas 2020. This slice focuses on Customer Experience.

Thank you to all the presenters and our sponsors: Automat Berlin, GoContact, Radisys, and Sangoma for making TADSummit possible.

Marlon Bowser, CEO, HTK (data-driven CX & loyalty)

Marlon has been CEO of HTK for over 24 years. Before customer experience (CX) was even a fashionable thing, Marlon was working on it for telcos enabling marketing and loyalty programs that included programmable communications.

The contextual relevance of voice, SMS, email or web chat as channels will remain for years to come. We really are at the early days of using WhatsApp, FB Messenger, Android Messenger (with RCS hidden under the hood), etc..

Another great point made was the importance of brands putting smiles on people’s faces, when and where it matters (context again). Marlon gave loads of use cases. One that interested me was O2’s Marketing IVR, which customizes the IVR menu to the person calling in. If it looks like they need to top-up, then that’s the first item in the menu. If it looks like they could be a churn risk, then give them a bonus with the top-up.

Overall it’s a great practice-focused guide to the reality and complexity of omni-channel communications. I think there’s much we can do in using the data across programmable communications to aid context awareness and put more smiles on people’s faces. It also highlights the importance of professional services to help brands navigate this complex and evolving topic. Omni-channel aggregation is the tip of a massive customer experience and loyalty iceberg.

The Future of Conversational Messaging Isn’t Social, It’s Digital – Access, Control, and the Power of Permissions. Paul Sweeney, EVP Product at Webio Ltd

Paul highlights the importance of joined-up thinking around the customer messaging experience to not lose control. WhatsApp will through 2021 become the next big thing in customer communications.

Paul highlights the important distinction between owned (email, chat, voice) versus bought (WhatsApp, Alexa, etc.) channels and the challenges that presents. You have to be where your customer wants you to be. But there is no need the ceed control to the internet giants. And this is where he positions conversational middleware in delivering the control to the brands through threading multiple channels.

Paul’s thesis is messaging becomes programmable services, programmable customer experience. I think Paul’s presentation, Abhinav’s review of fighting fraud and identity verification, Marlon’s Interview on customer experience and loyalty, Radisys’ keynote on gamifying the customer journey, and Miles Cheetham’s on Open Data, all point to the importance for both the brand and customer of joined up thinking across multiple communication channels. In delivering secure, personalized, and contextually aware customer experiences.

Fighting Fraud and Delivering Frictionless Customer Experience in the Contact Centre. Abhinav Anand, Chief Product Officer at Smartnumbers

Abhinav provides an excellent quantified review of the role Smartnumbers plays in call center fraud and authentication. For inbound calls they are in the signalling path and use over 200 parameters in their machine learning model. Gathering data beyond signalling using behavioural models and fraud consortium data. From that, their model produces a score and reason for that score. Which the call center uses in how the call is answered.

Abhinav also provides some great quantification on the authentication impact, such as IVR containment saving 3.50 GBP per call. That is when the confidence is high on the call, additional IVR options can be provided, see Marlon’s Marketing IVR example. And Agent Acceleration of 0.13 GBP per call.

Digital Identity For Seamless Onboarding in EMEA and APAC, Abhijeet Singh, Senior Product Manager.

Today, a phone number has become a universally acceptable link to connect to an individual, business or service. At TeleSign, the phone number is at the center of everything and drives our digital Identity initiatives. We use it as a trust anchor to provide a secure, seamless onboarding experience; increasing sign ups while reducing fraud.

In this presentation Abhijeet shares how a phone number can provide actionable insights throughout the customer journey. By leveraging a global data consortium and data science, TeleSign is able to strengthen the verification process, reduce fake accounts, reduce payment fraud and identify good users while improving conversion. The presentation focuses on the issues facing the EMEA and APAC markets.

Digital Identity For Seamless Onboarding in The Americas, Ravish Patel, Senior Director of Digital Identity Solutions, and Stacy Stubblefield, Co-founder and CIO Telesign

A phone number can provide actionable insights throughout the customer journey. By leveraging a global data consortium and data science, TeleSign is able to strengthen the verification process, reduce fake accounts, reduce payment fraud and identify good users while improving conversion. The presentation focuses on the issues facing the Americas markets.

• Today, a phone number has become a universally acceptable link to connect to an individual, business or service.
• At TeleSign, the phone number is at the center of everything and drives our digital Identity initiatives. We use it as a trust anchor to provide a secure, seamless onboarding experience; increasing sign ups while reducing fraud.

Digital Identity for the Financial Sector, Guillaume Bourcy – Global Sr. Director, Identity Solutions @ TeleSign and Frank Roessig, FinTech Lead @ Proximus

In today’s digital world, companies are increasingly taking their businesses online.  In industries where security is extremely important, like the financial sector, that can be difficult. Digital Identity can help bridge the gap. Join our webinar to learn more about the current and future challenges and risks facing the financial sector in Europe.