How data optimization is driving telco evolution at PLDT
Explore PLDT's expert approach to data optimization: A journey of strategic customer profiling and innovative engagement for remarkable business growth.
Experience PLDT’s data journey, from discovery to deploying a unified data hub, combining technical precision with a keen focus on customer-centricity. It included meticulously mapping data across systems, creating 360-degree customer views, and initiating tailored, real-time interactions – all in just six months.
How data optimization is driving telco evolution at PLDT
As a data management evangelist, it’s exciting to witness our industry evolve and grow in complexity, and with it, the ways our customers are seeking to achieve more with effective data management. The facts speak for themselves. According to Forester Research, 95% of CX decision-makers are facing challenges deciphering data, preventing them from extracting the crucial insights they need to drive business success. And yet, even though many have launched multi-million modernization projects to overcome this problem, studies by McKinsey & Company and the Boston Consulting Group reveal that 74% of them fail to meet expectations.
So when our long-standing customer PLDT approached us, seeking a reliable path to overcome the data management challenge, it was clear this was going to be an exciting journey. They already knew we had a strong industry reputation in the innovative domain of data optimization. But this was an opportunity to expand the scope of this partnership even further.
Working together, we began by determining the primary objectives for this new project. The first was to implement a customer-centric campaign platform to increase customer satisfaction, grow loyalty and significantly reduce churn. The second was to create a data hub to connect wireless and broadband lines of business, as a means to creating converged offerings and generating incremental revenues. These objectives paralleled the business goals of improving customer experience, increasing revenue and maximizing lifetime value (LTV).
With these in mind, we launched a wide-reaching project to create a platform with the capability to navigate the intricacies of modernization, and transform data into a powerful business enabler. This meant creating the ability to build rich customers profiles, and then identifying and embedding high-impact, real-time events into their journeys.
Taking a strategic approach
To achieve this, we enlisted the help of multiple units and stakeholders across both our companies – comprising marketers, data analysts, data scientists, marketing operations, data architects, developers and integrators.
Beginning with a discovery track, we set in motion a collaboration mechanism to ensure the converged data hub we were to create would align with the business objectives above. This involved mapping relevant data from billing, CRM, network, data lake and the product catalog, as a means to creating personalized journeys within a defined set of KPIs. We then identified all critical events relating to the customer state and experience, ranging from indications of roaming or dropped calls to establishing data usage thresholds. The idea was to allow the system to trigger data offers to customers in real time when an important event occurred.
Next, we created a comprehensive 360-degree customer view based on a profile panel comprising over 300 personal attributes. These rich profiles, together with the real-time meaningful event triggers, enabled us to deploy personalized contextual journeys, customized to each customer state and behavior – what we call “mass customization.” These predefined journeys are then set to trigger offers as needed to the right customer via the right channel.
To ensure a holistic approach to customer interactions, we also established control mechanisms such as centralized communication policies and priority settings, to support an optimal customer experience and prevent revenue cannibalization.
After only six months following go-live, the fruits of this effort were already evident:
- 5.7% increase in incremental revenue
- 5.2 points boost in customer satisfaction (NPS)
- 4.8% growth in upsells
- 2.6% increase in on-time bill payments
- 5.8% churn reduction
When talking about the project’s success, PLDT's chief transformation and customer officer, Emmanuel C. Lorenzana called out Personalized Next Best Offer (NBO) and Next Best Action (NBA), as two of the most successful offerings, attributing them to transforming the company’s call center from a “cost” center to a “profit” center. Other executives lauded the platform’s successes in enabling new modern data-driven marketing techniques, and their role in driving a quantifiable increase in market share.
For me personally, I feel amazingly fortunate to have been part of this groundbreaking project, which was a true team effort involving diverse people working across diverse areas. No less important was the caliber of the customer themselves, who not only understood the effort needed but the value it can bring to the business.
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