We live in an age where mature and established do not guarantee value and return on investment. Gone are the days when because an organization was large, had been around for a long time, and had a massive database of existing customers that this would mean they were the only option as a supplier. In todays connected digital economy and, in an environment, which grows ever more competitive, opportunity grows rapidly for smaller hungrier and more agile businesses to erode the monopolies previously held by legacy monoliths. Smaller businesses will succeed and champion the role as challengers in their field. This could not be more evident than in the telecommunications industry a fast moving digitally driven sector now at the cusp of a challenger revolution.

Owning the telco infrastructure may have previously guaranteed ownership of the telco customer but no longer. We live in a new digital world. A world with a multitude of easily available digital platforms that span the demographic divide and embrace consumer preference. This creates opportunity for telco personalization at both an infrastructure as well as messaging and communications level.

In an age where how we engage with our customers through our telco provider has evolved, and is no longer simply through voice, but now equally through data, in an age where automation, AI and machine learning determine how when and why we should communicate with our customers and most importantly at a time where choice and preference are more accessible than ever to our customers a Telco’s ability to be fast agile and flexible is often the most important. This can be the primary factor in what drives the CTO, CMO, CEO or IT Director to work a telco supplier.

There has been a significant shift in recent years away from voice as the optimal and primary source of business to consumer communications. The exponential growth of mobile telecommunications has driven the demand for data-based text driven flexible and yet immediate response driven dialogue. This dialogue is easily offered by smaller hungrier telco providers who place a greater focus on the customer experience and who can react faster to the changing dynamics faced by customers when interacting frequently with their customer base.

The demands on businesses are great because the demands of the customer and the expectations of the customer are great. Today we need to not only understand how the customer wants to engage but be able to react immediately to a growing demand for flexibility and an increased appetite for diversity in communications. This is far easier to deliver and respond to as a challenger operational in an environment full of operators slow to react and set in their ways.

A customer may benefit from sending bulk sms as opposed to outbound call centre marketing, or vice versa. A customer may benefit from a boutique of telco products in one platform that allows for real time choice of delivery as opposed to having to engage with a supplier every time a change is required. A customer may wish to produce secure communications when required that rely on 2FA or 3FA. Having all these products options and solutions at your fingertips enables business to retain trust loyalty efficiency and measurability at all times when dealing with customers. A telco provider that challenges the protocol of slow delivery and labored engagement will win the business of this customer.

The time of the challenger telco has arrived, tomorrow it may be Tik Tok, snap chat, or the next big communications platform, today may be SMS and voice , but the ability to deliver on all of these is what will set providers apart moving forwards and the ability of the Telco provider to respond to the changing digital landscape with its security, platform and preference agnostics will determine how successful the challenge will be.