Telecommunication Landscape and Opportunities Powered by Crowdsourcing Data

The lengthy time spent by so many people working from home all around the world during pandemic lockdowns, and in the “new normal” of the immediate post-lockdown period, is often described as accelerating five years’ adoption of office-related remote working  technology in to five months. Mass working from outside the office put, and is still exerting, unprecedented strain on mobile services as businesses transition to the digital space. Crowdsourcing can provide solutions to these challenges.

Work-from-home challenges

Businesses want to fuel efficiency and productivity through reliable telco connections, as well as provide themselves with security against potential cyber risks and threats to confidential business strategies and trade secrets, whether written or spoken. These are essential requirements, and they are long-term rather than temporary measures to maximize valuable client retention. 

A significant number of business leaders believe a large element of the recent change to working practices is irreversible, and that they and their employees will not spend as much time in the office as before. A September 2020 survey of almost a thousand UK company bosses, for example, found that 74% intend to retain increased levels of home-working after the coronavirus crisis ends.  

Within this shift to a new era of working practices and procedures, any business that sits still and looks like it takes clients or customers for granted can easily be overtaken by a competitor.

Responding to a new economy

Photo by Efren Barahona

For a massively greater number of office workers, video calling moved swiftly from being a novelty to an everyday expectation, creating a requirement for businesses in many industry sectors to expand their customer service and sales capabilities through both digital and telecommunication means. These factors have combined to create high demand for expanded call center volume and new services. At the same time, requirements for social distancing to reduce coronavirus transmission has led to a proportion of call center staff working from home.

The call centers are thus experiencing the same challenges as their clients. They need to maintain the quality of telecommunication services while under pressure, and help clients thrive in their own landscape at the same time. Feedback loops are vital to support and improve correct decision-making. 

Crowdsourced data supports innovative solutions

Crowdsourced data provides business intelligence that fuels and powers the improvement of services, while driving innovation that is ideally human-centered and relevant. Where to get it?

The unique crowdsourcing technology of umlaut collects real-world and real-time consumer experience and behavior data in various contexts, through apps downloaded on to many thousands of mobile devices in countries all around the world. Data is collected automatically, on an on-going basis as it actually happens, without relying on survey respondents to recall events, actions, times or locations.

The data is aggregated and anonymized so that details of any individual personal behavior remain undisclosed. The processes for data creation, interrogation, application and storage meet all the requirements of Europe’s GDPR regulations.

Valuable data is already available and being collected continually

Road traffic levels changed swiftly after the pandemic was announced. Source: umlaut

There are many opportunities and possibilities for umlaut’s crowdsourced data to address the needs of people, governments and business sectors. These include its internationally acclaimed benchmarking survey of quality and standards of telco mobile service delivery, which includes when people are travelling. 

Data based on the flow of population movements is therefore available to apply to other commercial and public service requirements. This has recently included helping local and national authorities determine the effectiveness of pandemic lockdowns through studying the movements of mobile devices matched with average user demographic profiles.

• umlaut’s Benchmarking, the de facto telco industry standard 
• Predict Behaviors from flow of movement studies initially designed to aid telco service improvement