Telco consultancy’s AI agent may pre-empt customer defections

Rochester telecoms technology consultancy Signum International has devloped an AI customer management tool to help providers identify billing problems, savings opportunities and customers at risk of leaving.

Signum Connect integrates with a provider’s existing billing and usage systems and analyses business customer data daily.

The platform is currently being tested within the customer support and growth division of an unnamed network Signum has worked with for 25 years.

It has also been demonstrated to networks, resellers, distributors and dealers, with a second version incorporating feedback due next month.

An AI assistant called ‘Larissa’ has been trained around Signum’s experience of mobile billing and customer management. Partners can brand and rename the assistant whatever they want so it appears as part of their own service.

An account manager could ask why a customer’s bill has increased, which users are approaching their data allowances or which accounts need attention that day.

“Connect identifies the relevant billing evidence, explains what has happened and can draft the communication to send to the customer,” said Signum chief business outcomes officer Bob Baker.

Signum says its expertise comes from more than 25 years working with mobile sales, account management and customer support teams. It currently analyses more than one million business handsets each month.

Evaluation

In one evaluation, a business with 2,500 devices had a shared 5,000GB monthly allowance but was consuming around 7,000GB. Moving all 2,500 users to larger allowances would have increased the bill by about £2,500 a month.

Connect identified 20 users were using more than 2,200GB and recommended moving those users to £20 unlimited-data tariffs, bumping customer’s monthly bill by around £400 instead of £2,500.

“The information was already contained in the customer’s billing data,” said Baker. “The difference was analysing it continually at individual-user level rather than waiting for an account manager to investigate after a problem appeared.”

Spotting customers before they leave

Signum says Connect can also identify behaviour that could indicate a business is considering switching provider.

Signals include declining voice and data usage, falling connection numbers, reduced roaming, unused allowances, increasing billing disputes and approaching renewal dates where there has been little recent contact.

“No single indicator means a customer is about to leave, but several appearing together could allow an account manager to intervene before the customer starts shopping elsewhere”.

Signum estimates the automation could allow an account manager currently responsible for around 50 customers to manage between 100 and 150.

The figure is an estimate rather than one proven in a commercial deployment. Signum says automated daily monitoring, notifications, customer communications and reviews should reduce the administrative workload limiting the size of account managers’ customer bases.