Using Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service To Scale Personalized Customer Experience For Media, Entertainment, And Telecommunications

In the fiercely competitive ecosystem of media, entertainment, and telecommunications (telco), customers can easily switch providers or services if they are unhappy. Because of this, organizations in these industries are constantly innovating to keep customers engaged and maintain high retention rates. According to Forrester research, while using AI and similar technologies to identify patterns in their customers’ journeys is not new for companies in these industries, generative AI (genAI) provides them with the ability to connect data points more naturally and generate insights to hyperpersonalize content at scale.¹

Microsoft commissioned Forrester Consulting to interview 20 representatives at 16 organizations and conduct a Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study to better understand the benefits, costs, and risks associated with Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service.²

In the full TEI study, Forrester found that an industry-agnostic composite organization would see risk-adjusted operating income growth of between $33.6 million and $169.0 million over three years, which is driven by increased top-of- the funnel engagement, conversion rates, and reduced churn. Over the same three-year period, the composite organization is also projected to recognize between $12.3 million and $28.4 million in cost savings due to increased employee productivity­.

This abstract will focus on the media, entertainment, and telecommunications industries’ use of Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service and the value it creates for their organizations.

As part of the broader TEI study, Forrester interviewed three representatives from two organizations:

• A senior vice president (SVP) at a North America-based media company with 1,000 employees.
• A head of data portfolio and head of digital care at a Europe-based telecommunications company with close to 100,000 employees.

Interviewees in media, entertainment, and telecommunications said that prior to implementing Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, their organizations were struggling with intense competition for customers’ attention spans and loyalty. Although personalization and customer experiences are critical to business growth, the organizations struggled to keep up with customer needs due to limitations in content creation and customer support processes.

Interviewees in media, entertainment, and telecommunications said that by adopting Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service and incorporating genAI into their organizations’ customer engagement processes, they found tremendous value in being able to create personalized content at scale. They explained that every touchpoint — from a purchase to a support call — is stored in an ever-evolving, language-enabled knowledge base that allows staff to analyze vast amounts of data to uncover new insights. They can then use these insights to improve their offerings as they can identify and address lingering customer satisfaction issues and use customer insights to anticipate future needs. Interviewees said this focus on customer experience through data analysis ultimately helps their businesses grow and thrive.

INVESTMENT DRIVERS

The interviewees’ organizations adopted Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service to find ways of creating personalized, relatable offerings for their customers. At the same time, they had to find ways to do so in a manner that made sense operationally. These organizations struggled with several challenges in their legacy environments, including:

• Intense competition for customer attention. Interviewees shared that the nature of their industry and its competitive dynamic often meant having to constantly compete for customer attention. In the media and entertainment industry, organizations had to compete not only with their direct competitors, but also other activities people could be doing instead. This means being able to create content offering that is captivating, relatable, and unique could be a key differentiator. The SVP at a media company shared: “There's a lot of competition for eyeballs in entertainment. Being [able to be the] first with certain information is critical, especially in the social space.”
  A similar trend was seen in telecommunications, where loyalty to a specific brand is very hard to maintain with low switching cost among providers. The head of data portfolio at the telco organization told Forrester: “Telco is a commodity. People are switching. We have to make sure our experience is so delightful that customers stay with us and we can reduce our churn.”

• Inability to create personalized content at scale due to limitations of manual human curation. Interviewees said that prior to implementing Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, creating personalized content was a time-consuming process and limited the variety of content the organizations could offer. Each piece of content needed an individualized human touch, making it difficult to cater to specific needs. By understanding user prompts and existing data, genAI can create fresh content in various formats including text, images, videos, and even audio. This allows the interviewees’ organizations to deliver a wider range of personalized content, keeps audiences engaged, and sets their brands apart from the competition. The SVP at the media company noted: “Depending on your fandom, we [can now] do a little bit of different storytelling based on the user cohort. We’re no longer going to be limited based on how quickly we can hire individuals to drive how fast we can scale.”

Key Results

The results of the investment for the interviewees’ organizations include:

Business growth from hyper-personalized content. Interviewees shared that their organizations use Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service to extract meaning and context across a richer set of data sources. This lets them craft highly personalized messages for each customer and allows them to adapt their interactions in real time based on various customer signals like browsing behavior or previous interactions.

• The SVP at the media company shared that having a clearer understanding of customers’ wants and needs allows the organization to capture their attention and that this can then further evolve into a full customer journey. They said: “Once we get people into the experience, we can personalize that engagement. That can turn into them buying merchandise, consuming our other content, and subscribing to our business.”
• The head of data portfolio at the telco company said they believe the additional level of personalization will translate into increased customer satisfaction: “We [measure] the collective experience [of our customers’ journeys]. We’re expecting to see a 10% uplift in customer satisfaction. In some specific journeys, we’ve seen a 25% to 30% uplift, but [we’re] not going to suggest that will happen everywhere.”

*For the composite organization presented in the full TEI study

*For the composite organization presented in the full TEI study

Continuous feeding of knowledge base to generate insights for new offerings. Interviewees also highlighted the benefits of analyzing large amounts of qualitative data with tools built on Azure OpenAI Service. They reported that by sifting through this data, identifying patterns, and linking it to other datasets, their organizations can now continuously build their internal knowledge bases. This translates to more relevant insights and faster problem-solving without needing the specialized skills of data science teams.

• The head of data portfolio at the telco company noted: “As more conversations with the chatbot occur and as the scripts get richer, there is more in what we can mine from them. We can use genAI to mine those scripts to drive our insights, as well.”
• The SVP at the media company said: “[We now] know every behavior of a user using our platform. If they’re involved with our content, we can track, manage, and log that. [We are] able to generate insights of everything from identifying risk of churn to putting them into a particular cohort to be able to deliver them the most topical content.

Productivity in creating customer engagement content. The interviewees reported that implementing Azure OpenAI Service enabled time savings in creating a range of marketing and product materials. They said that by using Azure OpenAI Service, their organizations leverage genAI to support the creation of huge amounts of content with as many subtle or significant variations as needed.

• The SVP at the media company said: “We no longer need a human editor to create and write that content. We could automate a lot of those workflows. This allows us to not only reduce some of the manpower, but also allows us to create multiple versions of the same sort of output. I would think by next year, within six months, we could cut this in half.”
• The head of data portfolio at the telco company shared: “We have to be able to meet the expectations of our customers when they need us. We also want to be more proactive in serving their needs when they didn’t know they needed us. [Azure OpenAI Service] allows us to do both of those things and create consistency.”

Productivity for contact center agents. Interviewees noted that their organizations use tools built on Azure OpenAI Service to analyze customer interactions. They said these tools allow them to identify common problems and provide personalized solutions more efficiently, which improves resolution times and overall customer satisfaction.

The head of digital care at the telco company told Forrester: “We think we can reduce the agent handover from 50% today to 30% in the future with genAI. We’re [also] adding another feature, which is summarizing a chatbot conversation. In markets where chatbot handles 90% of the interaction before passing over to agent, having the agent read the summary significantly expedites their ability to serve.”

Appendix A: Endnotes