Of the myriad frustrations expressed by today’s B2B telcos, techcos and MSPs, many of them come down to the same question: can’t we do this faster? 

In a recent webinar series, we explored how telcos, techcos and MSPs can streamline their quoting processes, customer communications and delivery processes for better business results. 

Faster Quoting

Quoting is a key part of your sales journey, setting the tone of engagement with your customer. 

Customer experience:

CSPs often underestimate how important a quality quoting process is, especially to the customer experience. This is a key moment when customers evaluate how much they can trust a company going forward, and whether their solution fits their requirements and can be provided within budget. 

For businesses reliant on a thriving pipeline, slow proposals translate to reduced deals and longer revenue turnarounds. Time becomes the silent deal killer, gradually diminishing pipeline.

Technology:

Automation is a crucial ally, streamlining time-consuming tasks in the quoting process. It not only improves accuracy, but also accelerates the configuration process, saving significant time, delivering quotes in seconds, as opposed to weeks and months. The key lies in leveraging technology as a strategic tool to enhance efficiency in the quoting phase. 

Processes:

A recurring theme with CSPs centers around streamlining processes to ensure a fast customer response. The key lies in scrutinizing the end-to-end process, ensuring accuracy in quotes, empowering sales reps for decision-making, and evaluating approvals. Exploring various approaches within the process and directing key information to the relevant departments can optimize operations, ensuring there is a focus on essential tasks and reducing time. 

People:

Sales teams often resist redundant tasks like double-handling data. This frustration can lead to shortcuts, compromising transparency. The success of any deal relies on the empowerment of sales reps, a shared commitment to common goals, fostering a culture of transparency and collaboration. The goal is to establish clear approval parameters, fostering confidence in sales reps and providing transparency to customers regarding timelines. 

Faster Communication

Communication may seem simple, but it’s really challenging in the current environment to get it right.

Customer experience:

Customer expectations have evolved, with an increasing demand for instant responses and a heightened need for transparency and simplicity in interactions. Customers expect CSPs to be aware of their challenges and interactions. Customers want proactive communication across all mediums that is simplified, personalized and meaningful. However, achieving simplicity is challenging, especially when dealing with complex deliveries. 

Technology:

Technology advancements now offer diverse communication channels, introducing automation as an option, and customers often have a preferred communication method. While this diversification simplifies certain aspects, it poses challenges in tracking the effectiveness of these channels. Supporting varied communication mediums is crucial in adapting evolving market expectations. A 360-degree customer view ensures all interactions are logged and accessible across the business, minimizing rework and optimizing communication for improved customer experience. 

Processes:

Effective communication during challenging situations is crucial. Many carriers struggle when factoring in fallouts or delays, encountering setbacks in approvals through various teams, and delaying customer communication. Generic automated communication may lack transparency, emphasizing the need for personalized communication. With the right technology, CSPs can deliver consistency in communications, ensuring that customers are kept informed.

People:

Clear guidelines on what can be communicated helps empower employees. CSPs need to be able to break down barriers between departments as well as establish common goals across the organization. In doing so, different departments are able to work as a team when reviewing challenges. 

Faster Delivery

Delivery is critical in ensuring that the end-to-end journey is seamless.

Customer experience:

Delayed delivery can have a major negative impact on CSPs’ overall brand perception. It’s common for customers to change their requirements related to their business operations, and carriers face difficulties in accommodating these alterations within existing systems, often resorting to canceling or rekeying orders, leading to operational complexities and delays. Providing a positive delivery experience is crucial for carriers as it significantly impacts various aspects of business. 

Technology:

Technology needs to address your processes today and tomorrow. Whilst telcos are investing in their tech stacks, the focus should be on providing self-serve capabilities for customers to make frictionless changes. Every part of the tech stack needs to have a specific set of responsibilities in order to deliver effectively. Layers and teams need to be able to communicate with each other and to the customer to ensure there’s an understanding of what’s occurring, especially if there are delays or if an order has fallen out. 

People & Processes:

Implementing effective processes and supporting systems is crucial to keeping both customers and internal teams well-informed throughout the delivery process. This involves ensuring clarity about the status of the end-to-end process, defining responsibilities and empowering team members to act within their roles. Being well-informed throughout the delivery process is essential to handle any changes, requests and provide customers with accurate information.