There has never been a more critical time for telco companies to transform their digital journey. For successful digitisation, telcos need a holistic, future-forward approach that anticipates customers’ needs.

At our World Tour London event, we spoke to leaders in communications and technology. Read on to find out how they are investing in digital transformation technology with Salesforce.

Why communications businesses are looking to digitise 

Customers are demanding simple, flexible, and transparent experiences more than ever before. Communications businesses are trying new ways of working to meet these demands.

Digital transformation in telcos and the digitisation of processes are key to success. Solutions like Salesforce can optimise workflows and provide sales teams with a 360-degree view of every customer. With tools like this, sales teams can nurture relationships and meet customers’ ever-changing needs.

Ultimately, digital transformation technology can decrease costs, increase customer satisfaction, and help businesses to grow with sustainable revenue. 

Using the right technology for the process is key 

A large number of platforms are available to communications businesses. But finding the right one is vital.

Beth Mitchell, Director of Commercial and Propositions, BT Enterprise, and James Sudworth, VP Digital & Customer Experience, Egress Software, are both spearheading digital transformation in telcos.

Through piloting new digital functionality with small teams, they have found what will improve customer experience, efficiency, and agility for future innovation.

At Salesforce World Tour London, Beth and James shared how they have used this technology on their multi-cloud transformation journey. 

Creating integrated sales channels 

One of BT’s goals was to transform its ways of working through greater integration across sales channels. This allows any relevant members of the teams to work together. Plus, it helps to strengthen customer relationships by providing a seamless experience.

Pre-pandemic, 30% of telecoms organisations stated that the biggest barrier to successful transformation was siloed data. But, when all channels have access to a single platform, you can unify your data. This leads to better business insights and an enhanced experience for sales teams and customers.

Future-proof with continuous learning and upskilling 

Digital transformation has also improved the colleague experience at BT. Salesforce’s Trailhead has helped BT to future-proof its operations. BT uses Trailhead to quickly onboard new employees to platforms and help everyone understand how tools work. BT also uses it to train existing employees on an ongoing basis. This has helped team members to grow within their roles and adapt to any process changes. As Beth explains, “We’ve really thought about how we redesign everything from the onboarding to the training process with a view to how they are going to operate day to day.” 

Getting the full value from technology 

It’s important to take time at the beginning of the process to understand what your platforms can do. This will help you realise the opportunities within your business.

Many companies are onboarding technology but not making full use of it. This can lead to missed opportunities for digitisation and waste valuable time and resources.

At BT, the team committed to ensuring they were getting their technology's true value. Beth explains, “We wanted to imagine the future and go from there, so that’s partly why we’ve tried so many things.” The way to do this is through piloting new features with test users, before rolling it out to the wider team.

Give sales teams the opportunity to compliment technology, not compete with it 

Egress is a high-growth scale-up B2B email security vendor that used its funding to implement Salesforce.

James explains how within Egress, they’ve demonstrated how these technologies can complement the sales team. This helps them provide a leading advantage.

A big challenge of digitisation is that sales agents tend to fear digital transactions, thinking they could threaten commission. But so long as the correct tracking systems are in place, anyone working with a potential client can still receive commission.

Using a small team to test and perfect the process 

One of the ways to perfect the digital transformation process is by using a smaller team. BT created an incubator. This allowed them to understand how digitisation works within their business and to make change faster.

“We’ve created an incubator where we’ve taken a small group of sales people and redesigned the way they work.”, Beth explained. The team was given some world-class sales tools to build a new sales environment. They used this to test with customers before scaling it out across the whole organisation.