The study, titled Getting Serious About the Omnichannel Experience, uncovers an interest among brands who would like to tap into the upgraded digital infrastructures, subscriber access, and valuable data repositories of mobile network operators and telco carriers.

More than 80% of brand marketers surveyed by the CMO Council in the first half of 2017 say their brands are increasingly reliant on global customer connectivity, secure digital communications, real-time customer interaction, and multi-channel content delivery.

Almost half of non-telco marketers surveyed by the CMO Council see a potential leadership role for communications service providers to provide brands with an optimised framework for omnichannel engagement – 11% do not, and 40% are uncertain.

In contrast, 56% of telco-industry marketers say that non-telco companies are out-performing telco operators and communications service providers in delivering a true omnichannel experience.

Four percent of subscriber-reliant telco companies believe they are giving their customers a consistent, personalised, and contextually relevant experience across all traditional and digital channels by leveraging persistence of information, respecting the privacy of customers, and aligning the business needs with IT. One percent of brand marketers say they have a complete omnichannel management (OCM) model in place.

"Less than 10% of telco marketers believe they are highly advanced and rapidly evolving when it comes to being more data-driven, customer-responsive, and digitally adaptive," says Donovan Neale-May, executive director of the CMO Council. "More than 25% list functional integration; cultural, technical, and operational hurdles; and resistance to change as obstacles to evolving to a true OCM model."

The research shows that more than 50% of telcos have partnered with non-telco brands on marketing and promotional campaigns. Nearly 70% of those report positive, productive, and fruitful relationships with good outcomes.

The CMO Council is partnering with the Open ROADS Community in the aim of creating an actionable framework for effective and consistent engagement across all customer touch points, and channels, of digital interaction.

The aim of the initiative is to advocate a common model, implementation roadmap, and practices and processes for evolving to a higher level of customer experience, value creation, retention, and business performance.

"Omnichannel isn’t a simple one-way street. In fact, our very name reflects the complexity of omnichannel transformation; Real-time, On-demand, All-online, Do-it-yourself, and Social,” adds Trevor Cheung, COO of Open ROADS Community and vice chair of The Open Group.

"Delivering the ROADS experience is an experience requirement and an architectural principle. It cannot be a single department fix. Marketing, technology, and customer service must work together. We believe the mindset, culture, and, really, the whole ecosystem needs to work together. This is necessary to handle the new consumer generation, but also the new business generation."

The report from the CMO Council and its customer experience board include findings from an online survey of more than 250 brand and telco marketing leaders, commentary from a CMO Roundtable at the 2017 Mobile World Congress, as well as insights from interviews with senior marketers at a cross-section of companies. These include KIA Motors, British Telecom, T-Mobile, Visa, Verizon, Royal Bank of Canada, Singtel, Deutsche Telekom, Airtel, and Telekomunikasi.

The full report includes:

  • Key areas where telco marketers say they are partnering and adding value to brand marketing campaigns;
  • Top reasons why brand marketers are turning to MNOs and CSPs to help address omnichannel and customer development needs;
  • Challenges, constraints, and barriers to partnering;
  • The data that CSPs can provide and the data that brands desire most; and
  • The omnichannel champions – the brands that marketers most admire.

Interviews, charts, and data from both non-telco and telco marketers are included in the 91-page full report, available for download for $199. A complimentary executive summary is also available.

You can download the report here.  

For more information, visit www.cmocouncil.org. Alternatively, connect with them on Twitter.