Faster speeds and broader coverage are no longer be enough when customers expect their telecom provider to deliver the same seamless experiences as their favorite apps. But can AI fix telecom’s customer experience problem, or will it just give customers another chatbot to navigate?
First Orion’s Josh Whitehurst and MCE Systems’ Alan Minney discuss what comes next: service that anticipates problems instead of waiting for complaints. From device health insights to more timely, relevant interactions, they unpack how operators could use AI to reduce friction and prevent customers from needing to call support in the first place.
But a more personal experience comes with a bigger question: can operators keep customers’ trust while using their data? Tune in for a conversation about consent, transparency and control, and why the real promise of AI is not the technology itself, but fewer surprises, less effort and a customer relationship worth keeping.
Catch the video at top, listen to the audio edition and read our transcript below, or watch this and future episodes on YouTube.
This podcast is written and hosted by Diana Goovaerts. It is edited by Diana Goovaerts and Matt Rickman. Liz Coyne is our executive producer. Special thanks to guests Alan Minney and Josh Whitehurst.
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Diana Goovaerts, Fierce Network: As speed and coverage become table stakes, what will customers actually value from their telecom provider? The answer is less about AI as a buzzword and more about whether operators can use it to become proactive, contextual and trustworthy.
Josh Whitehurst, First Orion: I don't fundamentally believe that most people wake up in the morning and say, "Hey, you know what? I want my carrier to have some more AI today." I think what we really want, the vast majority, is for things in general, tools that we use to just work better with less effort and issue,
Alan Minney, MCE Systems: It really comes down to are you being proactive or are you being reactive. It's sort of this idea of like, "Hey, let us know when something breaks," versus, "Hey, we noticed that something broke. We've already fixed it for you. You know, continue, continue on with your day." And so I think that's the expectation now versus, you know, three or four or five years ago.
Diana Goovaerts: I'm Diana Goovaerts and this is The Five Nine.
Telecoms operators are navigating a tectonic shift in how they do business. For years, wireless and broadband providers sold customers on faster speeds, broadband coverage and bigger networks. But in an AI-shaped world, that may not be enough. Customers are getting used to digital services that anticipate what they need, resolve problems before they escalate and make every interaction feel personal.
So what happens when that expectation hits telecom? We spoke to MCE Systems exec Alan Minnie and First Orion's Head of Product, Josh Whitehurst, on why and how AI could change the customer relationship in telecom, touching everything from outage notifications and device health to spam protection.
The clearest theme across these interviews was proactivity. Customers no longer compare their provider against just another carrier. They compare it against the best digital experience they had that day, whether that came from Apple, Amazon, Google, ChatGPT, or just their favorite app.
Josh Whitehurst: The majority of consumers, we all don't compartmentalize these experiences the way that a lot of businesses or industries do. It's easy to bucket industries whenever you're writing a business plan, but the receiving end of that is a human being and humans just think in terms of experiences, right? These larger tech companies, Amazon, Google, Apple, all of them are layering in AI natively into these experiences, that is setting a new tone and a new pace. And I think the challenge that is in front of telecom operators at a global scale is that, yeah, they're not necessarily being compared against one another anymore.
They're being compared against some of the best digital experiences that consumers encounter all over the place and it's from some of these folks that are leading the pack. So I, what I see emerging in the telecommunications space are those expectations resulting in faster, more contextual, more personalized experiences from their operator made available whenever they need them,
Diana Goovaerts: So the story here isn't about AI for AI's sake. It's about whether AI can eliminate pain points customers have come to accept as normal. Things like sitting in an IVR tree, repeating the same issue to five different agents, troubleshooting an outage the operator already knows about or getting blindsided by device problems.
Telecom operators actually already have an enormous advantage in tackling this shift: data. They have network data, billing and CRM data, device signals and communications data. But the opportunity is not to use every piece of data that is available. It is to use the right data at the right time in ways customers understand and value.
Alan Minney: You've got three touch points with a customer, right? So there's what's happening from the network perspective, there's what's going on from a CRM billing perspective and then there's the device, right? What we've seen traditionally is that the CSPs are really good at the first two.
What's lacking a lot of times is they just haven't really made the investment in terms of like, okay, what can we get off of the device? But when you combine that with the other two sources of data, now you've got this 360-degree view of your customer, which now allows you to be proactive, to be predictive, to be prescriptive,
Josh Whitehurst: I don't think that the opportunity is to use every single piece of available data. It's to use the right pieces of data responsibly and to create real tangible outcomes for the customers that are engaging with it.
Diana Goovaerts: The tension here is obvious, right? Operators may be uniquely positioned to understand network conditions, customer behavior and device health, but AI also raises the stakes around consent, transparency and control. The companies that win will likely be the ones that can explain what data they are using, why it benefits the customer and how the customer can change or opt out of that experience.
Josh Whitehurst: I've kinda reduced it to three fundamental questions that I ask myself and that I ask in these conversations and the first one is, what we are doing, does it create an obvious value for the receiving customer?
If the answer is no, then stop, right? If yes, proceed. And then if there is value and we believe the value's there, would I be comfortable explaining it to the larger customer base? What would their reaction be? That's a very telling question and response to engage in in thought exercises. But ultimately and I think to the heart of the question is, does the end customer still retain control? That third one is the big one and retention of control for the general population is a fundamentally, fundamentally critical piece to that equation.
Diana Goovaerts: Many operators have already gotten the ball rolling on the AI front with initial efforts focused on contact centers. And that makes sense. These workflows are already digital. The ROI is relatively easy to measure and the pain points are visible. But both interviews pointed to a broader opportunity here: AI that prevents the customer from needing to contact support in the first place.
Josh Whitehurst: It's incredibly simple now to deploy and build an AI agent that answers questions or optimizes different internal workflows, ROI metrics, right? But it's much more difficult, and this is I think the fundamental response to the question, to build and deploy an AI that prevents the question from needing to be asked.
Alan Minney: I think there's a ton of opportunities. I think there's opportunities around ARPU growth. I think there's opportunities around converged customers, you know, customers that are getting broadband service and wireless service from the provider. I think there are opportunities around being proactive around device health, for example.
"Hey, did you know that your battery is going to degrade another 40% in the next three months? Might be a good time for an upgrade or a trade-in offer." That's great, right? Because now you're proactively engaging the customer. And if they opt for another offer from you, okay, you've just extended that lifetime value.
Diana Goovaerts: That distinction matters. If AI is only a cost-cutting tool, then the customer may experience it as another deflection layer. But if AI can spot a deteriorating device, warn a customer before an outage becomes frustrating, make an upgrade timing more relevant to the customer or protect someone from a live scam, then it becomes part of the value proposition.
In other words, the use case isn't AI. The use case is less friction. It's fewer surprises, fewer bad calls, fewer support loops and maybe if operators get this right, a customer experience that feels a little more like the best apps people already use every day.
Alan Minney: You've gotta move really from a defensive posture, which is reactive, you're reacting to things, to an offensive posture, right? Let's get out in front of things. Let's actually contact the customer.
I was actually talking to one of our customers one time and they said, "You know, it's funny, we actually never even contact a customer when they're doing a good job." They're taking care of their device. The device is in great shape. They're draining the battery properly. There's all kinds of opportunities there for engagement: giving them a health score that says, "Hey, your device is actually doing really, really well. Good job. You know, here's a $10 credit to go buy a case."
Do you know what I mean? There's just tons and tons and tons of opportunities like that.
Josh Whitehurst: I think there's gonna be two groups and the first one is gonna use AI to primarily reduce operational cost and workflows. But the second group is already thinking about AI and again, I've seen really cool examples in production of AI being used to fundamentally reshape and rethink the customer relationship.
The ones that emerge as pack leaders long term are going to use AI to do just that, rethink the customer relationships, more focused on actual customer outcomes, stronger, more meaningful, trusted engagements, and relationships.
So I don't think in five years we're gonna be talking about AI as a standalone capability. I think it's gonna be fundamentally embedded into every single aspect of the customer experience and the companies that figure out how to do that well and establish trust with those who are their customers are the ones that are gonna emerge as leaders on that front.
Diana Goovaerts: The big takeaway is this: the AI race in telecom may not be won by the operator with the flashiest chatbot, but it may be won by the operator that knows when to step in, when to stay out of the way and how to make customers feel like the network is working for them before they ever have to ask.
That's all the time we have for today.
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