How to cost-effectively acquire fiber subscribers and grow efficiently.

Fiber has become the choice for fixed connectivity because it is faster and more reliable than cable. It also qualifies for many government subsidies for expanding broadband. No wonder the last-mile fiber industry is projected to grow to $24 billion globally by 2027.

But the business is challenging. Fiber broadband is costly to build and there are nimble competitors everywhere who aren’t constrained by legacy processes and systems. To get an edge during this boom and win the fiber broadband market, you need a technology foundation that lets you address all subscriber lifecycle needs with personalized experiences and stellar service.

In this guide, we explain how an agile, modular technology platform can be a springboard for success. It integrates all your data living in separate systems to create a single source of truth, which leads to many advantages. Here’s what it can do for you as you move forward with fiber broadband:

• Leverage insights to decide where to build
• Manage complex fiber broadband projects
• Scale the quote-to-order process and improve accuracy
• Serve fiber broadband subscribers efficiently
• Build customer loyalty with personalized experiences

Fiber broadband requires huge time and capital commitments. Service providers need sophisticated data and analytics to decide where to build.

If your technology integrates data from multiple sources, you can use all that information to assess and compare target markets. You might consider demographic metrics such as income levels, usage patterns, and what your competitors offer.

Once you have determined a prospective location, start marketing in the area to measure interest and generate enthusiasm. Reach out to those who are likely to need the best broadband service, such as businesses or individuals working from home, to condition the market. This can help you get a jump on sales and sign up potential customers even before breaking ground.

Advanced analytics can help you with intelligent market segmentation. For example, the marketing approach will differ based on whether the target is a business or a home, a health organization, or an entertainment venue. It sounds straightforward — yet most companies can’t make use of that kind of information, even if they have it. In fact, 70% of business decision makers and employees say their prospect and account data comes from too many sources to make sense of it. That leads to tremendous inefficiencies and hampers intelligent greenfield fiber development because you can’t segment or personalize messaging. Without those capabilities, you end up with general messaging that doesn’t appeal to each potential audience. That limits your leads and sales and restricts your ability to tailor loyalty offers later.

With a technology platform that incorporates all available data, from customer information to marketing campaign success to service issues, providers can:

• Get a bird’s-eye view of potential markets. Analyze relevant data to pinpoint your best option.
• Replicate the most effective presigning campaigns from your past. This cuts marketing and build-out costs and results in higher penetration and takeup rates.
• Rely on more accurate forecasting. You’ll get higher returns on marketing dollars and quicker time to contracts.

When many stakeholders are involved, coordinating fiber projects becomes more complicated — and potentially costly. Streamlining the process saves time and money and gets service to subscribers faster. To do this, carriers need the right technological tools.

For projects big and small, a flexible platform like Salesforce for Communications lets you integrate modules that evaluate candidate sites, forecast milestones, maintain sites with real-time data, and enable project teams to work seamlessly together. When you stay on top of your progress in the field, you can sync with marketing and sales efforts, keeping everyone in the loop and setting expectations with confidence.

Consider a complex opportunity like a multiunit building. Communications service providers first need to win over building management and then individual tenants — whether commercial or residential — who are the end subscribers. It helps to simplify the process wherever possible.

With an integrated customer success platform, you can improve complex B2B2C customer experiences. With Salesforce for Communications, service providers can:

• Negotiate the opportunity. Leverage best-in-class business sales methodologies and tools to win over the building owner or management company.
• Automate the contracting and approval process. Make it easier and faster for customers and sales teams to agree on terms and conditions. Standardized contracts help.
• Be flexible. Empower your agents to create personalized quotes for different bundles or speeds. You can also stay on top of the construction process with a project management app like Sitetracker so sales teams can keep customers informed as things progress.
• Respond quickly to requests. Reps should be available and connect the customer experience, whether they are in person, in your call center, or monitoring other service channels.
• Take control of all aspects of contract administration. A single system can notify renters and owners when specific milestones are reached – for example, when building begins or service is turned on. This keeps everyone informed without needing to ask for status updates.
• Offer easy self-service. Enable businesses to sign up for service through a digital self-service portal that also allows B2B sellers to easily configure, price, and quote orders. Customers who have questions or requests can also use online tools like chatbots or knowledge centers so agents don’t get overwhelmed.

The quote and contract process can be a bottleneck. Delays in responding to requests, flawed contracts, and order errors all impede service and frustrate customers. Plus, reworking orders is expensive. The costs can soar if you need repeat visits from field personnel to address problems.

These challenges usually result from inconsistencies among the product catalogs used for each business process. Details about products, services, and pricing may be different in the catalogs used for your website, your mobile app, your contact center, your field service agents, and so on.

You can solve this problem by connecting every quote-to-order process to a single, unified catalog. This will help you consistently apply pricing rules, efficiently orchestrate order fulfillment, and bring complete transparency to in-flight orders.

You can also automate common processes to eliminate inconsistencies and errors. This mitigates order fallout and revenue leakage, reducing the cost of sales. Automating processes and pricing are key to helping you scale your business.

With Salesforce for Communications, service providers can:

• Reduce order capture time. This improves sales efficiency.
• Improve order accuracy. Pricing rules are enforced through a guided sales process.
• Be consistent. Reliability will build customer trust.
• Launch products faster. Rapidly configure new products and promotions.
• Accelerate cash flows. That happens when you streamline sales processes.

Service is the key to growing your business. 91% of customers say a positive customer service experience makes them more likely to make another purchase. Yet for most subscribers, the experience often falls short. When they need live support, 56% of subscribers say they often have to repeat information.

Disconnected legacy system challenges are typically blamed for this weak customer experience. Just 49% of agents say they can find all the information they need to do their job on one screen. A 360-degree view eliminates customers having to repeat their information — agents can see the issues and know their history, whether they are in the office or in the field. With the help of artificial intelligence and machine learning, service professionals know the next best action to take, which lets them increase average revenue per user (ARPU), reduce churn, and increase customer satisfaction.

Human support is essential. Yet both retail and business customers want self-service options as well. In fact, nearly half of consumers say they use their service provider’s website to both research and purchase subscriptions. You can make that happen more reliably with portals that are easy to navigate. The content must be personalized, available on multiple channels, and feature guided sales, checkout, and onboarding steps that are simple to follow. Offering multiple ways to help customers results in more reliable service as repairs and updates happen faster.

Of course, there will still be times when service providers must send field service workers to help with installations and fix problems. With Salesforce for Communications, service providers can:

• Prioritize essential projects. Intelligently assign jobs from anywhere.
• Match workers and assignments. Consistently allocate the projects based on skills, location, inventory stock, and business rules.
• Give dispatchers full visibility. Let them see the mobile workforce and every job on a single screen.
• Enable customers to share photos of malfunctioning equipment. Workers will bring the right tools and replacements, eliminating confusion and additional trips back to the office.
• Offer tools like Visual Remote Assistant. It helps customers fix equipment or software themselves without needing a field service worker. It also helps techs in the field.

Churn is a serious problem for communications service providers. Sixty-six percent of millennials and Gen Zers say they are somewhat or very likely to change providers . Telecom satisfaction scores are among the lowest of any industry . And even if customer service is decent, 41% of subscribers will readily jump ship for faster speeds.

Loyalty programs can be your secret weapon, both in attracting and keeping subscribers. More than half of Gen Zers and millennials say a loyalty program is influential in their selection of a communications service provider. Loyalty programs can also create cross-sell and upsell opportunities. But creating a successful loyalty program requires careful thought about who you are serving and what each market segment will find attractive. For example, older generations prize traditional incentives, like discounts, removing hidden fees, or delivering better service. High-tier members may value the ability to bypass chatbots and connect directly with an agent.

With Salesforce for Communications, service providers can:

• Make it easy. Eliminate complex, multistep processes for signing up and for redeeming awards.
• Use data to personalize rewards and offers. Generic loyalty programs won’t serve your purpose.
• Lean on analytics and artificial intelligence. They help you serve the right offers to customers in the moment and optimize the program going forward.
• Create subscriber journeys. These help them achieve goals and track their progress.
• Collect first-party data. Reward subscribers for sharing more information about themselves and their preferences.
• Evolve your loyalty program. Match the changing preferences of subscribers.

Demand for broadband is growing, especially as governments offer more subsidies to expand service to underserved areas. Communications service providers can meet the demand using a digital platform that is flexible and powerful enough to manage end-to-end lifecycle needs — from lead-to-order, order-to-install, and in-life service management. A solution that is purpose-built for the communications industry offers a path to digital transformation that takes months not years. And a modular approach means you don’t have to swap out your IT platform all at once – you can make changes at your pace and fill in the gaps that are most pressing for you, such as field service or marketing or analytics and artificial intelligence.