CVM Trends in Telecom 2025

Egidijus: [00:00:00] Hi, I’m Egidijus and I am thrilled to welcome you to our special CVM Trends Report event. As CVM teams prepare for an exciting 2025, we decided to help them. We have gathered insights from 25 CVM teams across Europe, Africa, South America and Asia. And today, we will dive into these findings in a panel discussion with three outstanding CVM experts from all over the world. So we will have Silvia Gomez from Australia, Marek Grabowski from Poland, and Thierry Awetimbi from Democratic Republic of Congo. So let’s explore the trends together. So welcome team to this first CVM trends report. I am saying hello to all of you guys here from Lithuania. And we have a really awesome international crowd here. So we have Silvia Gomez from Australia. We have Marek Grabowski from Poland, and we have Thierry Awetimbi from Democratic Republic of Congo. Did I pronounce it right, Thierry? Yeah. Yeah. Correct. So we collected this awesome crowd of CVM experts from all around the world, so that we would have many perspectives on the work of customer value managers. And what we did was we did research with telcos from all around the world. We did deep interviews with around 25 telcos from Europe, from Africa, South America, pretty much covering the whole world, and tried to get the insights on how does the CVM work look like right now and where is this going? The CVM function itself is not very well structured.

Egidijus: [00:02:10] So the first set of the things that we wanted to understand is basically where does the CVM function sit in the organization? What are the KPIs? Is the CVM function happy overall or recognized in the organization? So I will, uh, will start dipping dive in into report right now and will ask you guys to get some insights. So for example, the first thing what we wanted to understand is to whom CVM teams are actually reporting. So we know that this is purely commercial role, which usually reports either to a commercial director or marketing director. But what we also see is that absolute majority of CVMs. They report to head of departments not directly to the C-level. For me, which was a bit of interesting because I expected that they will have direct access to the CVM level, which didn’t happen. What also struck me the most was around 67% of CVMs or CVM teams. They don’t feel feel that they are contribution to commercial impact was widely recognized in the organization. For me, it was like, okay, this is very interesting. CVMs are doing a really important job, like trying to grow the customer base and so on, but they don’t feel recognized for that. So we went a bit deeper and we tried to understand, okay, so you don’t feel recognized, but can you report a significant, let’s say, commercial impact.

Egidijus: [00:03:56] And from there we understood that half of the teams, that they could not report a significant impact to the kind of companies commercial in terms of like contribution to revenue growth and so on. And from there, we even made another step back. So okay, guys, if you cannot report the significant impact, how often do you actually kind of track your key KPIs like revenue retention percentage, onboarding, percents and so on. And what was also super interesting for me was that pretty much two thirds of the organizations they actually report either on monthly or sometimes on weekly basis, and only one third of the companies, they report on the daily basis. So an overall perspective for me, it’s very interesting. So it’s like a commercial role, but struggling to identify kind of what commercial impact does it give for the organization and a bit struggles to get recognized for that. So from there, what I would like to do is I would like to get your perspective. So for example, Silvia. Silvia, how do you view the CVM role in company strategic leadership? So do you see that CVM should be closer to C-level, or is it okay that they mostly communicate their impact through head of departments? What’s your take on this?

Silvia: [00:05:31] Yes. Thank you. Thank you for the question. And thank you for inviting me to be in the panel today. From my perspective and experience in the roles that I have hosted, they have always been reporting into the C-level. And in my opinion, it is very important that the CVM is seated at the right level in the table because it is a role that requires influencing. I would say almost every single department in the business. So yeah, in my experience, they can report either to a CMO or a chief commercial officer or revenue. So it’s a very marketing commercial mix that I have seen most popularly. Yeah.

Egidijus: [00:06:21] Okay. Thank you. Silvia and Thierry, from your experience, have you encountered challenges by communicating the value that CVM department brings to the organization?

Thierry: [00:06:34] I can say, um, not really. Just as Silvia mentioned earlier, we also report to the CEO actually. And um, because CVM actually it’s in what we call a consumer business units, we often directly work with the head of products to get to get alignment and to to like to get, um, put in place some kind of solutions with, uh, with all the teams. So not really. We never approach this, um, uh, this kind of challenges, but somehow we are, I can say, misunderstood on, uh, on the way we’ve done things. I mean, we do things because some people just I mean, some of our colleagues think that we have this magic stick. If there is a problem in some region, we, the guy can relate to CVM to, uh, to change, uh, the trends. But at the end of the day, I can say no, uh, we are like, aligned with the team. Yeah.

Egidijus: [00:07:40] So. So you are lucky because your contribution is really valued inside the team. Yeah. Uh, yeah. Uh, okay. Uh, Marek, I know that you did a tremendous work with your team and kind of calculating all the impact on the daily level of your CVM contributions. What strategies would you recommend for the CVM teams to increase the visibility of their work to the organization?

Marek: [00:08:13] So I believe that there is a certain level of innovation of CVM team that is needed to be effective. And then acquiring it is, uh, very important to the impact that we are delivering. And, uh, to do so, uh, there is a part of a strategic importance in internal transformation. Of course, they are under pressure, and the CVM is a part of the answer for the telcos. It is part of the growth transformation, revenue transformation. It is also very important client of AI transformation. So it is the right time for all of us to be heard and to look for, for the position that we should have. I also agree that CVM is very transversal working with channels, products, offers. So there is a need for this right place and communicating the real results is one of the ways to to to achieve the impact. And this can be communicated using communication of the use case result. I really recommend communication of the results versus control group. But still there. There might be issues with understanding what is this different reality of a control group and how it translates to the budget that we are normally tracking. So we should communicate both control and the budget impact of severe.

Egidijus: [00:09:53] And maybe kind of I see that you all of your team agree that CVM should have a big voice, let’s say reporting directly to the C-level. What what do you lose when the CVM team is not reporting to to the C-level? Who would like to take this question?

Silvia: [00:10:16] And I can start and maybe you go. You go.

Marek: [00:10:20] Yes. Please go.

Silvia: [00:10:22] Thank you. I’ll go then. Um, I was going to say that probably what is important is that, um, that the message doesn’t come through. I think that sometimes when the reporting level is lower, the conversation becomes very operational about a specific campaign or their specific insight. Whether it is working is not, or sometimes even if there are some data quality issues or a latency issues that need to be resolved, I think that by elevating the reporting to the executive leadership team, we moved from a very operational conversation to a much more strategic conversation, and that helps with some data storytelling skills to showcase across the organization why we are doing a specific CVM initiatives. And so, in summary, I will say that if the conversation becomes a lower level conversation, it is sometimes very operational, less impactful. But when the conversation happens at the executive level, you move beyond the complexities and are much more inspiring Striving to influence the business.

Egidijus: [00:11:46] Okay. And, Marek, would you like to add.

Marek: [00:11:48] I was going to underline the importance of the sponsor. I can imagine the situation when CVM reporting to a marketing director that is heavily involved and really good with the with the data and really good with articulation of all the CVM impact issues on the C-level, then I can imagine it working. But still there is a need for C-level sponsorship, sometimes even CEO sponsorship. There are different stake of different channels that the channels are normally powerful in the telcos. So it is important to have a good sponsor.

Egidijus: [00:12:32] Okay. Thank you, Tim for your insights. So we started with where CVM sits in the organization. What supports does it need from an Organization, then what we wanted to understand is what actual technical work does the CVM team do on a daily basis? So like, what are they occupied with? So the first question that we asked was like, how much time do you spend on ad hoc work versus like strategic initiatives? And what we found out is like more than 75% of CVM teams reported that they spend 50% or more of their time on, on kind of ad hoc things. And this for me was, wow, okay. This is like a very demanding role because like you, you are always dealing with different situations. So we went and did a few steps deeper and we asked, so okay, when you do your work, so which type of work does take most time for you. So is it like, I don’t know, some content management or kind of developing the roadmap of what channels to deploy or business requirements gathering, etc.? And we found out that pretty much the whole time is spent on either marketing campaigns, management, configuring supporting them, or transactional communication management or building reports and doing ad hoc data queries and analyzing the raw data. So a lot of work on, I would say, technical analytical stuff. And then we took some steps back and we asked to kind of wrap up this work into, let’s say, CVM programs that the CVM teams cover.

Egidijus: [00:14:37] And what we found out is that absolute majority of CVM teams say that we have really covered the most important aspects of customer value management. We have onboarding programs covered, we have upsell and cross-sell programs covered, and we have retention programs covered. This is like, I don’t know, two out of three telcos that we have kind of fully matured or maturing those processes. But when we talk more about the initiatives that tend to be more customer centric or that go beyond simple upsell or beyond simple retention, when we talk about, let’s say, loyalty, loyalty programs, device lifecycle management or life stage events management for the customers, like moving their house, etc. these are really, really not touched as a programs yet. So the insight that I take out of this is that a lot of CVM teams are under the water with operational things, and the thing that they are mostly focusing is like short term revenue gains rather than kind of bigger strategic transformations. And I wanted to ask you team. So let’s start Mark, with you. Uh, how do you see CVM teams balancing short term revenue objectives with a longer term customer value management strategies that shift towards customer centricity or balance this kind of revenue and customer centricity.

Marek: [00:16:26] I believe we talked about this during our podcast some time ago. It is really important to automate all the as much as possible for campaign management reporting, transactional reporting. Giving you the time to to to focus on on new ideas. And my example is that every monthly sturckow we are bringing to the table, like 2 or 3 new ideas per use case, giving us like sometimes even ten fun subjects to be discussed with sponsors and having their attention. Their engagement by doing so is really important. So this would be my $0.02 into how you should balance operational work. Very important, but automate and bring new ideas to the table.

Egidijus: [00:17:23] Okay, sounds very simple. Very simple. Thierry, I wanted to ask you, have you experienced, let’s say, challenges in operations. Yes. Operating CVM?

Thierry: [00:17:42] Yes. Of course. This is our I can say this is our our day to day actually, because the operational tasks are the ones who take us like 80 to 85% of our energy and time. And we I agree with Marek on the automation part. This is I mean, what you just said, it’s it’s 100% true. Um, but again, in another way, uh, what is CVM? What is CVM teams are supposed to do? I mean, if we’re not, uh, putting our hands in these operational tasks. But, yes, responding to your question, uh, we spend like 80% of time in, uh, on operational tasks. Yeah.

Egidijus: [00:18:27] Mhm. So, uh, so the good thing is that you have a lot of room for improvement, you know. Yeah. It’s like, that’s it. You can do lots of, uh, changes that you can say, yeah, we did this, you know. And exactly. Silvia, a question for you is like when the teams start thinking, moving from, let’s say this core CVM initiatives like upsell, cross-sell, retention to a more customer centric initiatives, what is, let’s say, the shortest path to transition to towards those initiatives and why they are important for for the short term revenue gains as well?

Silvia: [00:19:12] Yes. Um, it’s a very good question. And I don’t know if it is the shortest path, though, because I think it’s more a little bit like a marathon, because it requires a change of mindset from the different product owners to really push back and not to say yes to every single product led initiative and change the mindset to be a customer centric, somehow gatekeeper of what goes to the base. And and I think one of the reasons why CBMM roles are so operational in the day to day is because no one else in the organization is able to communicate to the base in a way that is consistent, that is compliant with all the regulations, and that take care of problems that come up on a daily, weekly basis. And, and telco is a very competitive market. Therefore, when we need to quickly respond to the market, there are a lot of activities that rely on the CBMM teams to be delivered to the customers in a very, very quick manner. And so I think one of the first steps to take is to establish a little bit of a gatekeeper process, a prioritization mechanism, and a front door that helps take on any new requirement or any new demand, and then measure that demand in a way that is consistent to understand the outcome that it will deliver.

Silvia: [00:20:48] It can be a customer churn benefits. It can be NPS, multi-service and a metric or penetration, you name it, but also very much aligned with the strategic priorities. And by establishing that process, we also help the teams a lot, in particular the CBM teams that are at the point of contact to other parts of the business because they are normally put in meetings and situations where they have a lot of demands, and it’s not for one individual to take on the load of all those demands, sometimes coming from very senior people in the business. So the process will empower those, um, people to really come back to the process and in an objective manner. So this is the demand, this is the outcomes that the demand will drive, and this is the capacity that we have to deliver. And we think that you will have a number of initiatives that are to automate and build capabilities and initiatives that will be maintenance and adjustments as prices change and things like that. But within that list, you can show also the trade offs, and therefore there is a very good conversation at the leadership level to decide, okay, with the current capacity, with the priorities that we want to focus on, these are the activities that CBM will deliver versus the other ones that are trade offs. Mhm.

Egidijus: [00:22:23] So uh we’re basically kind of reviewing Reviewed that, um, uh, you can reduce operational struggles with automation. It is important because you need to build the capacity to do those transformational changes for which you really need the support and gatekeeping from the leadership as well. And now it seems that to do all those good stuff, uh, the prerequisite is automation. And, Marek, I think the last question for you is, like you said, that, okay, we went through all this, uh, automation journey. I don’t believe that you where you have automated everything from day one. The question is, how much time did it take for you to get into this position? You know.

Marek: [00:23:16] So I would say that there are kind of three levels. One is, uh, reporting on the transaction reporting. And I think this is kind of maybe the easiest part of this for us. It took like a couple of months to have the dashboards, the dashboard that we are using. Then there is all the campaign system automation, and this is a longer project. So for us, when already for some time we are having quite a big level of campaigning automation. And well that is like a project. So the first for every operator between three to, I don’t know, nine months of the of the work. This is the need to implement the system so it can be even quite long. And the third level is all the the next best action automation. And I think this is the hardest one. Um, already we are automating all the NBA arbitrage between use cases and it is still developing. I think it was the longest one to to to really implement the level that we have right now. It was like nine months. And I think we are still developing, still fine tuning, still increasing use cases. So this part is the toughest.

Egidijus: [00:24:48] Uh, you are moving towards operation struggles. So, um, now wrapping up this theme. So we see that operational work is a really huge part of the CVM team. And, uh, the basic assumption and the basic value proposition from all technology companies is that, you know, uh, with our tool set, you will automate everything, and everything kind of in your life will be beautiful. So what we did is we went and asked, what is the state of tools that telcos have in terms of data, in terms of campaign management, in terms of machine learning? And what we found out is that in telcos, like majority of the telcos have really state of the art tools in data warehousing, big data management, customer data management field. Uh, reporting solutions are great. Um, next, best offer, next best action solutions are great, and so on. So these kind of teams tend to have really, really good, uh, tools in place. So it’s like no more, uh, majority of the teams cannot say that, you know, our technology stack is very bad in data and so on. But when we ask, let’s say the $1 million question is so in that data, uh, stack, uh, did you manage to achieve a single customer view? Did you manage to connect all that data because you’re collecting a lot of that data? And here the answer struck me a lot, which said like, uh, only 25% of the teams report that they have, uh, a single customer view with, uh, with minor inconsistencies, which means like, okay, the technology is there, but the single customer view is not there yet.

Egidijus: [00:27:08] So this one was, uh, one very, very interesting insight. And then we did some extra, uh, uh, analysis, uh, comparing the tool set which is available to the CVM teams, we ask the questions. So how does how much time does it make to to make changes. So for example, to create a new campaign, uh, or uh, to get a new report, to extract a new customer, to develop a new segment, etc.. And what’s interesting for majority of the things like launching campaigns and so on, it’s a very fast process. It’s for absolute majority of the teams. It’s like it takes days, which is which is great. But then when we talk about adding like launching a new communication channel, adding a new price plan to our offering, uh, delivering integration with some internal systems or integrating new machine learning model into our communication. Almost two thirds of the teams said it takes either months or sometimes years. So, uh, the insight that I take out of this is, like many of the teams have really state of the art tools in in place, but the level of insights they can extract doesn’t seem to be matured yet. So. So, uh, my first question would go to for you, in your opinion, what could be the biggest obstacles that prevent the teams of building this single, um, customer view? What would be your opinion?

Thierry: [00:29:09] Yeah, uh, in my opinion, I think, uh, we are in an industry, uh, with many data sources, actually. So let’s take an example for for markets, we have this, um, mobile money, uh, um, products, which is kind of, uh, another, another structure, another company. So we what is the obstacles is, as I said, the data sources, the, the, uh, the where we can get this data or this, uh, the, all the data. So let’s say for having an NFC, uh, system we made, first of all, make sure that we have clear a clean data for the customers. So my obstacle number one is, uh, I mean, there, if I can say, uh, the obstacle is the data sources, the multiple data sources that we have. Excuse me, I’m repeating myself and, uh, yes. So. And and the obstacle number two is, um, the team. Team collaboration. Why I’m talking about team collaboration. Often some objective seems to be commercial. I was telling myself when when when I’m talking about churn, it seems to be directly something related to CVM only. So, uh, this priority may not directly be the that at the same level from a guy from, uh, just as I said, mobile money. So having all this data unified may help me. I mean, may help CVM to to have this view, but still, uh, the obstacle is it’s, uh, this, uh, to have this all the data in a in a same, uh, in a same platform, if I can say that.

Egidijus: [00:31:03] So, uh, at telco, you are both lucky and cursed because, lucky, you have a lot of information on on which you can build stuff. And cursed. It’s like you have a lot of information which needs to be integrated.

Thierry: [00:31:16] Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Correct. Because, um, maybe sometimes the the strategy is not that directly, uh, ask the management to invest on big, big, big data warehousing. But still we do have data, but having it in a same and unified platform, it’s a real challenge for us. Yeah. Mhm.

Egidijus: [00:31:37] And um, Marek, I have a question for you because we, we have discussed with you in the uh, in the podcast about MLOps and so on. And I know that you are again advanced, quite advanced in this field. Uh, but majority of the teams reported that it takes months to add new machine learning model or prediction into operations, you know, into running the campaigns. So, uh, why why is it so hard to do this?

Marek: [00:32:15] Well, we’ve been in the same place. So new data, new new machine learning model. It was like a challenge for 3 to 6 months. But right now it is rather, uh, couple of machine learning models. Even more than ten per sprint. Three week sprint. It is. If requested, it is possible, but it comes with the quite, uh, big level of automation, uh, and, uh, uh, quite big level of development of MLOps. Uh, and I would say cloud and cloud, uh, for, for us, it was, uh, one of the game changers, uh, giving extra time for data scientists to experiment with the new approaches to their models. New features of the, uh, with the data and, uh, uh, so, so so that is on the machine learning level. But then there is a whole like value chain so that the machine learning scoring must be put into NBA, then to campaigning system, then to CRM. All that needs to be in place. And in many telcos it is not there. They are like manual interfaces between different systems. Sometimes CVM is not really inputting the data into. So there are many challenges and the more you are advanced, the easier it gets somehow to to to deliver the impact. But in the beginning it can be really hard. Even the telcos, they are strong on data warehouse of course, but there is also a issue on the data quality. Um, so well, I agree that this is, uh, good to to have this in place to be able to react quickly and to change the number of machine learning models, or the type of a model that you use this sprint to another sprint.

Egidijus: [00:34:19] Mhm. And um, Silvia, uh, a question for you is like why is it important or why should you care about having single customer view or being capable to add new machine learning algorithms? Uh, fast or new communication? Uh, quite fast. Uh, from the customer centricity perspective, it’s like, why is it important for the for the strategy?

Silvia: [00:34:50] Yes. Um, I think there are different reasons for each of the ones you asked. And so in particular, it is important to have a single customer view, because one of the key drivers of loyalty and lasting customer relationships is making sure that customers realized that you know them. Therefore, it would be very annoying from a customer perspective. For example, if they just got a new service with you and then you send them a letter as a welcome to ABC Telecom when they already had a service with you. So that personalization of the message is very important from an experience perspective, also from a commercial perspective, so that you do not try to sell the customer the latest device if they just bought the device, for example. And then also from a reputational perspective, sometimes there are specific vulnerable circumstances that customers are facing and not having the relevant information in one place so that you can apply exclusions in your campaign activity and also be conscious of those circumstances can create reputational damage to the brand as well. So for that reason, the single customer view is very important, and a few others so that you can see the potential growth obviously across the not just the individual customer but the household.

Silvia: [00:36:26] And the second one, in regards to the machine learning models, I think that we need to find the right balance between, um, what we know today and exploring additional opportunities and uncovering value pools in the base and some assumptions that we wouldn’t have realised the models can, can unpick or uncover. Sorry. For example, you can identify customers that will churn because all the customers similar to them churn in the in the past that are not in the traditional campaign retention, campaign A targeting, or you can understand that your fixed customers are churning at a specific point of the journey, and so the machine learning models help you to become more accurate and somehow bank up the knowledge on each iteration, which is what is very, very important is to make sure that the feedback loop is well established, which is sometimes a problem as well, so that you continue to learn instead of somehow become a little bit stagnant on the improvement curve.

Egidijus: [00:37:45] So, um, pretty much, uh, it’s kind of, uh, um, it’s extremely important if you are if you have this customer data and machine learning in place to play in this basically next level game if you want to create more value faster. And the challenge is like, even if you don’t have these basics in place, you may say, I am the most customer centric organization, but you will probably be kind of stuck in the operational things, if I understand correctly. Yes, that.

Silvia: [00:38:30] Is very hard. It will be very hard to deliver a consistent experience without the automation of the campaigns and having the data and analytics models to help you to become more efficient, because it will be like starting from zero every day, almost. And there is a lot of and probably this is related to the first question in terms of the recognition that CBM has across the business. There is a lot of value that CBM is building ongoing Going just with the automated campaigns. We are constantly targeting the base that meets a specific criteria with retention, growth, onboarding and a number of other activities. If that wasn’t automated, there wouldn’t be any communications going out unless you build them manually and that will be very hard to maintain.

Egidijus: [00:39:27] And I think we are moving extremely smoothly to the next insight. Because when we talk about customer value management, we we always talk about either 1 to 1 communication or hyper personalization, uh, trying to achieve this, uh, personalization level for our customer base, which would make our customers feel that they are valued and create the value for them. So what we tried to understand is how deep is current personalization levels at organizations. Given the context that we have. So first question that we tried to understand is how which channels are available in telco and how personalizable they are or how personalized they are. So of course telcos have a lot of channels. They are like around 13, just standard ones. And then you can go to 20 and more if you if you want. And what was really interesting for me is like absolute majority of standard channels like SMS, email, mobile app or web self-care, USSD, IVR, customer service, points of sale and so on. They are of course available and with the very high personalization level, meaning majority of the telcos say that we do personalized communication in those channels. But then when we try to understand, okay, so we have the capability to personalize every channel, but can we create this omnichannel experience, meaning that can we, um, sync the communication through different channels and hear what struck me the most was like less than two out of three, uh, teams said that we have a, uh, we have implemented this omnichannel experience.

Egidijus: [00:41:45] We have synced this experience. Uh, so this was like insight number one for me, which was like, okay, this is, uh, I thought that, uh, kind of this was a task Tasks like ten years ago, we were talking about the same, but it still seems to be a challenge. And then we wanted to understand how deeply our personalized kind of how much, uh, personalization do we have in this daily activity. So, for example, how many different segments do we use when we target our audiences? And, uh, almost a half of the teams reported that they have less than ten segments that they are working with. And they also report that they have, uh, like, uh, close to 70% of the teams reported that they have 50 or less automated campaigns running per month, which for me is a signal or suggests that campaigns tend to be a bit broader and less aligned with individual customer needs, or less aligned with this pure 1 to 1 communication part. So, um, I wanted to ask you guys several things. So first of all, uh, is it important, uh, to, uh, to have this omnichannel experience? Uh, first of all, so, for example, Thierry, uh, why do you think is it important, is it not. And and what’s your perspective on this?

Thierry: [00:43:35] Okay. First of all, uh, in the markets where we are, uh, operating, I’m not really sure that it is important. I mean, um, remember when we have this discussion, I, I mentioned about this low literacy rates. So, uh, customer tends to know the product either in on TV or directly out at a point of sales. So having a multi-channel could be a nice to have, but really not really, really a must have in DRC. Again, talking about this segmentation for a one on one personalization. This is something actually I really like the the point of silver because I’m here in this panel, but I’m learning a lot about this ML and AI stuff because we are in a market with like 21 million customers, with different cultural, with different languages. So even though we now having around 50 segments in DRC, it’s still hard for us to, to to I mean, to design a successfully personalization because of all the stuff that I say, uh, if you just send a wrong communication in error. A wrong language to the customer. It can connect to a to a low customer satisfaction. So that’s the kind of issue that we are facing. So now deciding on going on omnichannel, maybe we can always test but I’m not sure uh according to our culture actually.

Egidijus: [00:45:13] Mhm. Yeah. And um okay. So this is kind of uh, what also struck me through all these reports that, um, uh, worldwide, the, the contexts are so widely different. And, uh, let’s say that, uh, all the things are kind of it really depends on the context where you are, whether it’s important or not. And maybe make a question for you is when we talk about, well, we use these terms like personalization 1 to 1 communication, hyper personalization. Uh, could you put in simple terms, what does this mean for consumers, and what does this mean for the CVM teams. Kind of why it is important or not important. Uh, piece of like having this 1 to 1 conversations.

Marek: [00:46:11] I would say that is, uh, in the future. That is a holy grail. Uh, right now I think we are personalized enough. So we are communicating like hundreds of, like five, hundreds of different propositions with different personalized discount, different communication, giving like a thousand of different types of communication. But many of that is automated, built by, uh, from pieces uh, to, to create the offer and communication to, to the uh customers in the future. I would like to to to to have really We have your communication and to be able to communicate. I don’t know, to cat lovers I can look for my sports fan and that is possible already. But the lower segments, it’s difficult. In the telco world. Sometimes we don’t have enough data to understand whether our customer is. I don’t know, mentioned cat lover or introvert or extrovert. So looking at the data that I have, I can identify a piece of our customers that are really introverts and extroverts, and I can align the type of the the message to the customer, uh, character. But that is only a piece of customer base. For the rest, it is still general message. And of course, to have this personalization to create the communication we need. Well, it’s January. It’s January and still under the supervision of a human. But it is already January. Mhm.

Egidijus: [00:48:03] And, uh, to build on top of what you said because you said like the, the, the Holy Grail, uh, it will be the Holy Grail in the future. Uh, for me, when I am talking with different CVM teams, I see some teams, they have like hundreds of campaigns running or like, I don’t know, 500 different campaigns with target audiences anywhere from, let’s say, one minute to, uh, to 1000 to like 10,000, like very, very small, comparably small groups. Now, Silvia, the question for you would be it’s like, um, do you really need to run hundreds of those personalized Analyzed campaigns so that the customers would feel as if they are communicated on one on one basis. Or is it just my limited technical perspective, you know?

Silvia: [00:49:02] Yeah. I was reflecting through this trend as you guys were talking and, and I think it would be impossible to really understand the impact of a thousand campaigns or 100 campaigns going in parallel. I think, um, the hierarchy of those campaigns is, is very important. And sometimes, um, also there might be differences in the naming convention that the different people or teams that have answered this question had in mind. Um, because at the end of the day, CBN is about grow, retain, retain and engage. And obviously you can always have additional activities in the sense of making sure that the customers are well onboarded, that you serve the customers when there are issues. But how many different high level campaigns can you have? I think less than ten from a hierarchy perspective, because those campaigns will have the purpose of either ensuring a good onboarding experience, or make sure that the customers are approached from a growth perspective to cross-sell, upsell, retain the customer loyalty, engagement, service activities. You can be more or less granular, but at the high level I will say less than ten. And then obviously within each of those big categories, you can define a number of sub campaigns or intent objectives for the specific campaign. But if you build that in an automated way, it becomes like events or a cohort’s characteristics.

Silvia: [00:50:51] Or you can also have a separate stream on top of the always on running campaigns, like a specific behavioral triggers that occur that trigger an automated response on a specific channel. And once you have established that that again, I don’t think there are that many at the high level. It’s more about the segmentation and the 1 to 1 of a channel, etc. once you have that, I think it’s also very important to really understand the hierarchy of those campaigns. If a customer is eligible to all of those activities, what goes first and having the processes and the reporting to prioritize accordingly and to measure the impact of each campaigns. Because, as we all know, No audiences will drop based on recency rules, but the CVM cutoff needs to be in control of those trade offs to make sure that the right customer needs are prioritized and the right campaigns get the audience before other campaigns that are probably less relevant to the customer at a specific moment in time. So I will say in this particular one, less is more. And, um, just make sure that you understand what’s happening and what’s going out is not a black box.

Egidijus: [00:52:20] Um, so so I like that there are so many different perspectives, and the truth is somewhere in the middle. You know.

Silvia: [00:52:30] 100%. Yes. And it will depend on the context as well, obviously. Yeah.

Egidijus: [00:52:36] Yeah. Um, okay. So I think we covered the primary, uh, Topics that we did the research from the what CVM team does, and we also tried to cover how bigger trends impact the, uh, kind of CVM work, basically. So and these bigger trends are like digital transformation, uh, convergence of the telcos becoming those cuatro players, genii, uh, how this technology is impacting our daily work and so on. So I would like to briefly also touch, uh, these aspects. So, uh, what we did is we also asked the teams, um, are they, uh, do they have gen AI capabilities in place right now? And, uh, are they planning Learning to experiment with generative AI capabilities. So what we found out is that roughly, uh, almost half of the team said, yes, we want to do something, uh, with gen AI in the field, but we are not very sure, uh, where should we invest? And kind of and we, uh, try to understand the different popular topics such as, like capturing customers intent, whether in a website or in other places, personalizing price plan selections with gen AI, helping call center agents to troubleshoot some um aspects. Enabling smart product searches. Evaluating call center agents. Performance Explaining Bill’s reasons, generating clients profile summaries, personal personalizing messages like to SMS, emails, etc. and the insight that we got is that the only place where the gen AI now is used in production is evaluating call centers, agent communication at least, which we noticed. And then we see that kind of there are some areas where like personalizing price plan selections, helping call center agents to troubleshoot the issues, explaining bill shock situations for the clients to help to reduce churn. These are the hottest spots where the teams are looking at. And, um, uh, I wanted to to ask you some of your perspectives, because we know that all the kind of, uh, telcos in the world are in very different positions. So, uh, Thierry, let’s start from you guys. So, for example, are you as a team in a position to even start thinking about adopting of, uh, GenAI technology?

Thierry: [00:55:59] Yeah, yeah. Um, I think, uh, yes, we start having that discussion and, uh, as a confirmation, we start a pilot with a call center actually using those, uh, AI chatbots and and all the stuff around that, uh, just, uh, on this once again. Uh, yes. But, uh, we are not I mean, in my opinion, we are not mature enough to to embrace totally GenAI so far because, as you know, uh, we are in a global, uh, company. So our support, I mean, our I mean, the team is directly supporting us with AI and ML stuff. It’s on, uh, on our HQ, HQ, which is in SA actually South Africa. Um, so yeah, uh, we are starting testing this AI stuff with call center, but not yet. Um, like, as advanced as the other countries. So it’s, it’s really, really on an early stage for, for DRC.

Egidijus: [00:57:08] Yeah. And, um, Mark, a question for you. So, um, where do you. Because nobody knows yet. How will GenAI impact the CVM work? But where do you see the biggest opportunities or where would you place your bets, you know, on AI.

Marek: [00:57:29] So for for the commercial use cases, I have seen some statistics on the number of different explorations within the orange group countries, and most of them like more than 50%, they are located in call center. So and that is like natural, I think usage of generative AI because of the quality of the communication with, with, with customers. So 50% their second biggest use case is personalization of messages. And here this is like, well this is CVM and already working as I mentioned before, um, under human supervision, it is still too early to make it like gen AI and automated send outs to to to customer. Um, but we are, I think not far away from that. So this, this human supervision is like like just looking at it and before sending. So it is, I think, possible. And there are some very interesting use cases in the future, like, uh, building, um, general personas to test the communication, also using, uh, DNA. So there are interesting use cases in the future. But I agree somehow still early but the impact will be there.

Egidijus: [00:59:02] Mhm. Okay. And uh, question for you, Silvia. Do you see, um, uh, how GenAI can be used in enhancing customer experience, let’s say beyond let’s say call centers. And uh, this because this is like the obvious one.

Silvia: [00:59:22] Yes, absolutely. I think it is progressing quite rapidly. And one example that I can comment on is in particular on how to use the app for self-service queries. And so we started with a pilot where basically a small group of customers were going to the app and ask a question. And for example, my phone is not working and therefore the app will populate the response through using these GenAI algorithms and models. And obviously it took a lot of testing, a lot of training. And we also did that obviously in a very secure environment to make sure that, well, all the safeguards that are being implemented and and discussed as we talk were respected and we were compliant with those. And due to the huge success it had in driving better customer experience, reducing calls to the contact center and a few other metrics that we evaluated. It’s been now rolled out to all the customer base through the through the app. So that is just one example outside of the contact center. And that is showing results very, very quickly.

Egidijus: [01:00:49] Very interesting. Uh use case actually. Uh, so it will be interesting to, to understand how how the impact actually expands and the idea about the generating personas with the, uh, with the Genii. This also sounds, uh, very, very exciting. Marek, I would ask you to give, uh, basically kind of your thoughts on overall, uh, the kind of the insights that we collected. Did you learn something new? What was the kind of, uh, interesting part. Inspiring part from your side.

Marek: [01:01:33] Well, I think that is a very good contribution to the development of CVM industry. It is important to see key trends and the level that companies are. We have talked a little bit before that the sample is not covering thousands of telcos, but still it is an important sample and I think that there is. I was also surprised as you as that there are many companies with CVM function that still has a big potential to, to, to grow or to be elevated to C level. As we discussed before, I think we are lucky to to be in the group that already recognize Recognized the strategic importance of of CVM. I was also a surprise, but maybe it is obvious. So tell us that they are good or IT architecture level, all the data, data warehouse, etc. but still the data quality data sources and aligning that into customer 360 is the challenge for many telcos. I hope it was already the buzzword of the past, but I think it is still the challenge for for many. So it was very interesting to see those kind of information and insights from the from the survey.

Egidijus: [01:03:17] Uh, thank you Marek, thank you for for all your great insights and the contribution to, you know, making customer value managers famous. You know.

Marek: [01:03:31] I think it is like an obligation from all of us to to make this small, industrial powerful.

Egidijus: [01:03:44] Yes. Thank you. So from here, what we will do is we will continue with two more trends. And, uh, Mark, if you are, uh, here to.

Marek: [01:03:57] Yeah, it was great to talk to you. Very interesting insight from your side of the world. It was also a big thank to you, to all of us together. Thank you guys.

Egidijus: [01:04:08] Yes. Let’s continue with the rest of, uh, uh, trends. So, um, there, uh, there is one trend which is called the digital transformation. And the digital transformation is A happening for the last 20 years. It’s not kind of a direct trend for CVM teams, but it’s basically an overarching trend that impacts CVM work. And, uh, the aspects of the digital transformation that we wanted to understand is how much of the sales and communication move from, let’s say, traditional channels such as point of sales agents and so on, more towards digital ones, because this is kind of this is the piece that impacts the CVM team’s work directly. And what we found out is that. Uh, a lot of sales are still happening outside the digital channels. And what I mean by saying a lot is I mean that roughly half of the companies, uh, say that less than, uh, than 20% of their sales happen in digital channels. So basically half of the telcos less, less than 20%, which is, uh, quite surprising for me. At the same time, uh, there are like 10% of the companies that we say we went quite further ahead and we do 80% or more of the sales there. So I wanted, um, to ask you, Tim, uh, is it still important for telcos to move towards those digital channels? And here we will have a very I hope that we will have two very different opinions. Uh, I would like to start Thierry, uh, from you. Uh, and, uh, what is your opinion on that?

Thierry: [01:06:32] Yeah. I think, um, again, uh, digital transformation, it’s it’s very good, very fine. But, um, it will be quite hard for us to directly, uh, opt for this digital on the, uh, on, on the cells because of the actual, uh, processes and all the effort that it requires, uh, the sales force to to embrace the digital transformation. So, uh, by, by saying that it’s, I mean, everything which is required change. It requires us to fear because the guys are they have their own behavior, they know what to do on a daily basis and so on and so forth. And not only the behavior, but also the tools that they may need. When we say digital, it’s more or less having a smartphone in your hands. So, um, mixing all this, uh, this, I mean, all these challenges, I think still, it’s it’s going to be good. It’s going to be fun. But still, it’s hard for us to to directly and registered from transformation because of this lack of knowledge, because of this, uh, lack of tools, again. And, and this fear that we are. I’m just talking about.

Egidijus: [01:07:55] Uh, yeah. And, Thierry, if I understand correctly, even the let’s say the society is not ready for, uh, a full digital transformation because, as you were mentioning, like maybe the literacy rates are lower, maybe the, um, uh, penetration of smartphones are lower, etc.. These are kind of even if you as an organization would transform all your processes, the the society might not be ready to transform yet. If I understand correctly.

Thierry: [01:08:24] No, I mean, I mean, the society is ready to transform because, uh, the, uh, the use. I mean, how can I say the use is different, actually, because even though the literature rates. The literacy rate is still lower, but we are seeing an improvement of digital adoption. Like for, like for, uh, about two digit every year we move for like 15% of smartphone users. To 30 in 2 or 2 or 3 years. So it’s improving. It’s growing fast. But the only. Thing is, when we are referring to cells, I am referring to my point of sales. My point of sales. I mean, my my foot soldiers. This is where we it’s kind of. Yes, it’s kind of because those. Those guys are businessmen, Naturally, this is where I think, uh, the the adoption should be lower at this stage. But on a customer level, uh, I think that’s the improvement is, is we are we are seeing a good, a very good adoption at this time.

Egidijus: [01:09:35] Mhm. And Silvia, from, from your perspective, is it like a is it still a thing uh in Australia or digital transformation is long gone.

Silvia: [01:09:47] Yeah I think it’s not long gone. I think there are new features capabilities, channels and martech technologies that arise. And they are all considered part of the digital transformation. And I believe we have significant good percentage of sales in the big device launches and the big moments in the calendar year like Black Friday, the Christmas or summer holidays. All those campaigns and key moments have huge representation and percentages of digital sales. I think we’re probably the complexity kicks in is in the ability through the digital channels to drive that personalized proposition to the customer. And what we have faced at times is that that personalized discount, that personalized proposition, is not an easy to be redeemed for the customer through the digital channels. So there is a trade off between the personalized proposition and the experience. And sometimes enabling that redemption through the contact center or the retailer stores provides higher customer, better customer experience. So for below, the line offers, sometimes we rely as well on that assisted channels. Um, um to to make sure that the experience is better for the customer. So there are some trade offs as well.

Egidijus: [01:11:29] So, uh, a very interesting, uh, thought so. Do I understand correctly that even though let’s say you have a huge sales team which is on the ground and actually runs the sales, uh, you actually can create a better customer experience because you have a way more human interaction compared to when we drive everything to digital. Well, basically, this is what I heard from Silvia. I know.

Silvia: [01:12:01] No, but I guess what I meant by that. Sorry to explain it better. What I meant by that is that the redemption of the discount, it’s easier or it’s doable. Feasible through the assisted channels because they have the operational tools that support the personalized offers so they can open these operational CRM or MBA tool. It has different names on different organizations where they can see for customer A, there is this discount that I can apply on the operational tool straight away, versus if the customer goes through the digital channel. In the e-commerce platform, sometimes there are complexities to integrate the channels, build the Boltons, all the different technical teams that need to align to ensure that that offer is a redeemable for the customer on the online channels. So yes, maybe the experience is simple because customers get there and buy and stay home and they get this. The plan is straight away. However, there is sometimes missed opportunities because of the the internal complexities of the systems that can be overcome through an assisted channel.

Egidijus: [01:13:32] Thank you for the clarification I think. Yeah. This is a an overseeing part which is kind of really important piece. Uh, that team contributes, you know, in doing this hard work on helping to redeem, uh, the offers and the last, uh, overarching, uh, trend is that telcos, as organizations, they tend to get bigger and bigger. It’s like, there was a time when you create, uh, well, telcos would kind of there would be one company that does only broadband, and then another company that does only mobile. And over the time, the companies they actually merge and also the offering merge into the convergence offering. When you can single, when you can purchase both mobile and home services from the single telco. And here this trend uh, even though CVM teams cannot impact the decision to launch, let’s say, a new product line or to merge with the two companies. But the product portfolio impacts, uh, the CVM team and how, uh, we basically recommend the offers and what is our impact there. So what I want what we wanted to understand is how many companies have actually moved towards the convergence offering. And how does this convergence offering impacted CVM KPIs such as rpu and churn rates? So, uh, what we found out is that, uh, only around one third of the telcos can report that from 20 to 50% of the customers, they they purchase all services from the single telco, meaning, and broadband TV, uh, mobile and so on. And when this happens, they are capable to report of like 30 to 50% of them are capable to report of up to 50% of rpu gains. And, um, anywhere from 20%, um retention gains meaning if. Well, the literature says that if you purchase all services from a single telco, the only way you churn is you either die or you do something terribly, terribly wrong so that the customer would leave you. So I wanted to get your thoughts on this. Uh, let’s start, Silvia, from you. Uh, how do you see this trend? Do you see the rpu gains and retention rates drop here?

Silvia: [01:16:42] Yes, absolutely. Um, we can see that in some organizations, actually, just by adding the fixed service, your churn rate reduces drastically. It could have. It could be, um, even more than half, uh, the, the improvement that you get there. Um, obviously, in the more the customer commits to your services, the more responsibility you also have to service the customer. Because you have more interactions, you have more opportunities to deliver that seamless experience. But you also need to showcase that a single customer view that you know the customer, and that the personalization that you drive is adding value to the customer as well. And so I agree very much with the trend. And there are so many CVM initiatives that are about building that engagement, that share of wallet that is stickiness through the convergence of propositions.

Egidijus: [01:17:48] And how does it resonate with your context?

Thierry: [01:17:53] In my context, it’s a different story. Totally. It’s a totally different story. I’m in a market where 99% of customers are prepared, first of all, And um, even though, uh, telco are moving to tackle uh, my organization uh, are not. I mean, we don’t we don’t start, um, providing this conversion product yet. Uh, so, uh, all we can do, I mean, if I can explain quickly the structure, we do give conversion for enterprise, but not for for consumer. Even though we have some, uh, players in the market who are providing FTTH. But still we have different firms, uh, uh, giving different products. So I give GSM. I have another player giving, uh, fiber to the home, and I have another player giving TV. So we we are not I mean, ready to I mean, we are not giving all the conversion yet in, uh, in the marketplace.

Egidijus: [01:19:01] Okay. So, uh, this is a really interesting thing. Like how how we are different, you know, we are solving the same challenges, acquiring, growing and retaining our clients. But we are in a so in a very different context. And so to start wrapping up. Yes. So the question for you, Silvia, what did you learn? Uh, what was interesting for you, uh, from this first report that, that we tried to do?

Silvia: [01:19:36] Thank you. Well, I learned that context is almost everything sometimes. Right. And, um, it is important to challenge also our beliefs and try to understand different perspectives as well. I love to hear from Thierry, from Marek and I always like the way you pose the questions as well, and try to get us a like deeper into the insights and getting good tips and recommendations that might be helpful for the CVM and heads of the world that are trying to build a function that somehow build that customer engagement ongoing the loyalty, and it helps the organization deliver their strategic priorities. So yeah, I learned a lot.

Egidijus: [01:20:28] And Thierry, a question for you. What, uh, what was interesting for you out of this?

Thierry: [01:20:34] Yeah, actually, I think, um, we have I mean, of course, we are operating in different markets. Um, some of the, the insights from the report doesn’t really reflect, uh, my marketplace, but still what I really liked it, the interaction of the other panelists, because we are facing the same, same kind of issues, uh, same kind of culture of enterprise. And that’s what I really. Liked.

Thierry: [01:21:01] Even though I just fell. I mean, I fell. Now, put it this way. I believe now that, uh, gen AI, ML and AI stuff, uh, can, uh, can be, I mean, are a true game changer. Uh, because I just heard it, uh, some some use cases from Silvia and Marek, and but still, I think that’s my view on CVM is quite different, not only because we are on different markets, but still, uh, we have much to learn or to, to do in CVM by CVM, uh, crew members, I say.

Egidijus: [01:21:41] Mm. Uh, very good. And, uh, the final question for both of you, uh, uh, is we are definitely doing the same report next year and we will be learning a lot. What questions should we ask next year to be further, more helpful, you know. So let’s start Silvia, with you.

Silvia: [01:22:07] Can it be a double question?

Egidijus: [01:22:09] Yes, definitely.

Silvia: [01:22:11] Good. So the question I was thinking is a what did you do this year that you shouldn’t have and what would you have done instead?

Egidijus: [01:22:26] Okay. This is a very tricky question.

Silvia: [01:22:29] Yes it is. But at the end of the day, we just get the plans for the year, the Alps, and we start initiatives that sometimes throughout the year do not deliver the benefits that we thought they would. So I think it’s important to be courageous and pause some of those initiatives or stop them completely. And also at the same time, as we go through the financial year, we realize of initiatives that we had not thought about when creating the plan. So yea, I think that mindset of constantly rethinking or reassessing is this still making sense? Is there something I haven’t considered that I should be adding into the mix? I think that’s a very, um, yeah. Good question. Yeah, it keeps you improving every year.

Egidijus: [01:23:25] We are writing this down and Thierry, what would be your question?

Thierry: [01:23:32] In my opinion it would be it will be about structure. I would maybe ask, uh, what are a perfect CVM team should look like? What, uh, what role? Uh, I cannot miss in my in my CVM team. Is it better to have my technical guys with me in my CVM team? Like, let’s say, for example, in my in my case, technical guys, the one who are running campaigns, who are maintaining my my system are not directly part of my team because I’m commercial. But is it better to have them with me in the commercial team? So it would be around, uh, CVM structure CVM.

Egidijus: [01:24:20] Yeah. Good. I am marking this down as well. Thank you. So thank you. Tim. You had really, uh. I learned a lot, uh, from your reflection and your insights. And I hope that we will see. See you next year when we will do the trends for 2026, you know.

Silvia: [01:24:45] Absolutely. Thank you so much for having us.

Thierry: [01:24:49] Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you, Sylvie, for your insights.

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