Consumers Still Value the Human Touch in Telecoms Customer Experience Despite Digitalization, Amdocs Report Finds

JERSEY CITY, NJ – February 17, 2022 – The vast majority (85%) of consumers still rate highly-skilled and knowledgeable contact center and retail store agents as key to an excellent customer experience from Communications Service Providers (CSPs) according to new research commissioned by Amdocs (NASDAQ: DOX), a leading provider of software and services to communications and media companies.

The Give the Agents Wings report, based on research carried out for Amdocs by Coleman Parks Research, reveals that despite digitalization and the growing role of AI and unassisted self-service channels, decision makers at CSPs see agents as pivotal to sales growth and brand success.

Agents themselves, however, are often too overwhelmed to provide the ‘wow’ moments that today’s savvy, demanding, empowered consumer expects. They say they are being held back by challenges including the growing number of services on offer (73%), the need to be knowledgeable across multiple products, platforms and technologies (62%) and the increase in customer interactions (51%).

Of the 3,000 consumers surveyed for Amdocs across North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, 70% said they would likely switch brands if they were offered better customer service by another provider.

The publication of the report comes as Amdocs launches a new cloud-native application designed to enable CSPs’ customer service agents to provide omnichannel, personalized, streamlined and efficient support tailored to individual needs.

Amdocs Customer Engagement has been designed with the complex and multi-tasking nature of today and tomorrow’s agent role in mind. It allows contact center and retail store agents to manage all care and commerce aspects of the customer relationship.

Embedded with telco-specific AI/ML capabilities and enhanced automation, the single, unified and modular application facilitates key aspects of the customer service agent’s complex and varied role. It includes speech-to-text tools, enables multi-topic interactions and multi-channel sessions and helps anticipate customer needs, identifying the best solution to a query and exceeding customers’ expectations.

Built on the Amdocs Low-Code Experience Platform to enable easy customization of the agent experience, the Amdocs Customer Engagement open architecture integrates with any system and partner, as well as any internal or external data source. It is also pre-integrated with Amdocs Commerce & Care Suite and Amdocs Customer Experience Suite.

“Technology increasingly underpins customer experiences across the telecom industry, but we cannot discount the power of human interaction,” said Anthony Goonetilleke, Group President of Technology and Head of Strategy at Amdocs. “It’s vital that agents, facing a more diverse set of customer needs, are able to understand, empathize and deliver personalized solutions that act as a powerful sales driver and customer experience differentiator. That’s why we’re so excited to make customer experiences seamless with the launch of Amdocs Customer Engagement.”

Supporting Resources

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About the research report
Research for Amdocs’ Give the Agents Wings report was conducted in summer 2021 by Coleman Parkes Research, an independent B2B market research agency. The study used a mixed methodology (phone to web and online surveys) and successfully surveyed 3,000 consumers, 100 customer relationship management (CRM) decision makers in Tier 1 telecommunication companies and 150 of their customer agents, across North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. To gain deeper insights beyond the main survey, five agents and five CRM decision makers took part in a series of in-depth interviews. Click here to access the report.

About Amdocs
Amdocs helps those who build the future to make it amazing. With our market-leading portfolio of software products and services, we unlock our customers’ innovative potential, empowering them to provide next-generation communication and media experiences for both the individual end user and enterprise customers. Our 29,000 employees around the globe are here to accelerate service providers’ migration to the cloud, enable them to differentiate in the 5G era, and digitalize and automate their operations. Listed on the NASDAQ Global Select Market, Amdocs had revenue of $4.3 billion in fiscal 2021. For more information, visit Amdocs at www.amdocs.com.

Amdocs’ Forward-Looking Statement
This press release includes information that constitutes forward-looking statements made pursuant to the safe harbor provision of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements about Amdocs’ growth and business results in future quarters. Although we believe the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are based upon reasonable assumptions, we can give no assurance that our expectations will be obtained or that any deviations will not be material. Such statements involve risks and uncertainties that may cause future results to differ from those anticipated. These risks include, but are not limited to, the effects of general economic conditions, Amdocs’ ability to grow in the business markets that it serves, Amdocs’ ability to successfully integrate acquired businesses, adverse effects of market competition, rapid technological shifts that may render the Company's products and services obsolete, potential loss of a major customer, our ability to develop long-term relationships with our customers, and risks associated with operating businesses in the international market. Amdocs may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future; however, the Company specifically disclaims any obligation to do so. These and other risks are discussed at greater length in Amdocs’ filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including in our Annual Report on Form 20-F for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2021 filed on December 10, 2021, and our Form 6-K furnished for the first quarter of fiscal 2022 on February 1, 2022.

Media Contacts
Michael Youds
Amdocs Public Relations
Tel: +44 7855 827 038
Email: michael.youds@amdocs.com

Holly Abbott
Babel PR for Amdocs
Tel: +44 (0)7527 521057
Email: amdocs@babelpr.com / holly.abbott@babelpr.com