Prediction: how telecoms will fare in our new Covid-19 world (and beyond)
Our world in 2020 has certainly turned out a bit differently than many of us imagined it to look at the tail end of last year. While the notorious c-word (Covid-19 or coronavirus) has dominated the headlines over the last few months, many are still trying to wrap their heads around what it means for them and their company over the next year or two. This is my view of how things will evolve from a macro perspective in the telecom space in the short-term, mid-term, and long-term. My hope is that this article gives you a few ideas on how to position your company in this new world of ours and how you might engage with and grow your customer base in these trying times and beyond.
Short-term and Mid-term
There’s no question that the telecom industry is going through a tough time in the near term. According to some recent statistics, mobile and data usage might be up by 25–50%, but most of the world’s telecom stocks have experienced falls of at least 25% from March to April 2020. Putting markets aside and looking at the picture on the ground, many B2C telecom professionals have relayed to me that issues ranging from long call waiting times, to first call resolution, or even simply upgrading your service to handle more traffic, have all become major headaches. While most of these challenges are certain to pass with the Covid-19 outbreak, the feelings and general expectations of customers not being met right now could very well be difficult to rectify in the future.
Mobile companies and ISPs are likely to feel a lot of pain in the near to mid-term. From a customer experience perspective, one of the most challenging transitions they’ve had to make in the last few weeks is setting up contact centre agents into a remote working environment. This may sound easy enough to do, but when you have to get this in place within a week’s time, you’re going to experience enormous difficulties.
Cultural Challenges
Unlike many other positions (engineering, marketing, sales, etc), one has to remember that culturally many of these agents are the least used to working in remote environments, so it’s not only a physical shift but also a mental one that has to take place. Over the long term, I see many of these changes likely sticking. Everyone in the telecom industry knows that contact centres are expensive, from many different perspectives — operationally, yes, but also increasingly from a real estate perspective. Once telecoms realise they can trim these costs without hurting their customer experience or bottom line in the long run, keeping with the 100% remote contact centre will be a foregone conclusion.
What are some other short to mid-term consequences of Covid-19? As many have already experienced, a steep drop in sales because of retail store closures and supply chain disruption. While many think of the telecom space as a mostly “virtual industry,” which, in many ways it has increasingly become, brick-and-mortar retail sales still account for a whopping 60–80% of all service sales. These statistics vary quite a bit when looking at different mobile companies. In the UK, for example, all one has to do is walk up and down their local high street to realise this. Practically every other shop is a BT/EE, O2, Virgin Media, Three, or Vodafone store. While mobile e-commerce sales have been growing rapidly over the last few years because of consumer preferences, this is one area not to be overlooked — particularly when it comes to your sales, marketing, and CX strategy. It’s also worth mentioning that customer demographics matter a lot here.
Supply Chain Chaos
Supply chain disruptions will also come into the mix as the telecom space is one of the most decentralised and dependent industries on international trade and commerce. This is particularly relevant to the larger mobile providers that own and manage the network infrastructure on the ground and in the sky (unlike the MVNOs who purchase access to that infrastructure). What will most likely be affected here is the pace of innovation these companies have been making around the deployment of 5G in the last year or so. Some mobile providers may even consider the viability or safety — not from a security standpoint, but a supply chain one — of purchasing critical network infrastructure from Chinese firms like Huawei. More emphasis will likely be put on purchasing from domestic (or in the case of Europe, regional) network infrastructure suppliers, like Ericsson or Nokia. Only time will tell in this case.
Lastly, in the short to mid-term, telecoms will likely experience a hit in revenues and profits as governments implement a series of orders to waive bills to keep those who cannot afford mobile or internet services connected and online in such times of difficulty. We’ve already seen elements of this in the telecom sector and are already experiencing its full-blown effects in real estate (relating to rent and mortgage payments).
Long Term Horizon
After we work our way through these short to mid-term affects, what lies on the horizon longer term? Well, as the Danish physicist Niels Bohr once said, “prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.” With that recognised, I’m going to give you my forecast as someone who works in the field. In the long term, the telecom sector, particularly looking at mobile, data, and internet services, will have a bright future ahead.
Stable connectivity to far-flung places and people will remain and grow to be one of society’s most foremost desires and assets. All you have to do is look back in history to know this for certain. For example, during the Great Depression of the 1930s, when polled, most folks would have given up practically anything, including new clothes, spacious housing, and even food, to cling on to their automobiles and radios. This exemplifies the importance human beings place on staying connected, particularly in times of hardship. In this respect, I don’t believe human nature has changed all that much relative to the 1930s when you consider how much we covet today’s forms of connectivity — mobile phones, the internet, and social media.
Lastly, relating to the argument for continuous and greater connectivity, not only will individuals desire more of this between themselves, but will also desire and expect more of it from businesses and other organisations they engage with. This will lead to the rapid expansion of other sectors adopting telecommunication technologies. Healthcare is the most obvious example of this. You’ll see greatly increased interest and need to shift to digitalised record keeping and communication with patients, robotic and automated healthcare workers in hospitals, and biometric virus predictors in everyday life. All these will lead to greater inputs and needs from the telecom industry.
While the telecom industry has certainly taken a beating from Covid-19 in the short to mid-term, as our world becomes more digitalised and organisations and people yearn to communicate more often and efficiently with their customers, there’s no question that the industry is, and will further be, best positioned to operate in the new, post-Covid 19 world going forward.
What do you think? Are my predictions correct or will things turn out differently? I’m very much looking forward to your opinions and outlook for this very important sector. Thanks for reading!
