Lebara – a mobile-virtual-network-operator – is a small telecommunications company operating in five countries and it has faced typical challenges of small telecommunications companies, such as struggles with the adoption of new technologies due to limited resources and budget constraints.
Lebara underwent a true data transformation in under two years, shifting the entire business strategy from offline retail stores, to an online, digital-first, AI driven customer experience. From no data science team and a rudimentary KPI reporting warehouse, Lebara overhauled its tech stack and data culture, delivering five times as much data in 12 months, empowering machine learning, personalisation, and lifetime value-based relationships with customers. This has driven a 44% increase in customer base, with 66% now active online versus 40% pre-transformation. Churn has reduced by up to 15% and Lebara now has a market leading Trust Pilot score.
Lebara deployed a state-of-the-art technology stack, enabling targeted campaigns, natural language processing, and an AI driven customer experience. These changes created a 5.3% uplift in active customers, generating nearly €500,000 in additional value.
Why a datalake was needed
Lebara previously acquired customers through offline retail stores and had no ability to personalise engagement with customers. There was a limited understanding of consumer needs, and no tailored offers to reward loyalty, creating shallow customer relationships. Customer dissatisfaction was reflected in a dismal 1.9 out of 5 Trust Pilot score, and sector-high churn rates in France, causing considerable revenue loss.
Prior to migration, the on-premises data warehouse consisted of siloed, outdated technologies that had not changed in ten years – its sole purpose was reporting high-level KPIs. Data pipelines lacked automation, meaning business decisions were based on out-of-date data – up to 11 days late. Furthermore, this legacy platform had no way to measure profitability, restricting our ability to identify or retain on high value customers.
With no data science team, customer communications were one-size-fits-all. No personalisation, no machine learning, and no AI.
Lebara migrated from data warehouse to Lakehouse, overhauling their entire technology stack, bringing both data and applications to Azure, with Databricks as the unified engine for data processing, and MLflow to for the machine learning lifecycle.
The new Lakehouse architecture allows access to nearly five times the volume of data to be ready for analytics. Decisions are based on previous day’s trading, compared with the 11-day lag prior to migration.
Within just 18 months, a dedicated Analytics team was formed consisting of 15 members including Data Analysts and Scientists, to build machine learning models and lead the adoption of generative AI (genAI).
GenAI has been deployed as a suite of intelligent digital workers, increase capabilities in customer experience.
AI Driven Chat-Bot services:
- Over 50% resolution rate achieved in March 2024.
- Cutting edge technology is enabling customers to self-serve 24 hours a day, 365 days a year saving €2,500 per month in the Netherlands market alone.
Trust Pilot Scores:
- Lebara is now category leading, scoring 4.4 out of 5 in France, compared with the dismal 1.9 in 2022.
- Prompt Engineering in Azure OpenAI helps translate, summarise, and categorise reviews – so Operations Directors can quickly solve customer pain points.
Call Centre Agents:
- 17 seconds reduction in average handling time (AHT) in the UK.
- The human-in-the-loop co-pilot helps agents sift through compliance and training documents, pro-actively suggesting responses for customers.
The data lakehouse enables deep dives into margin, profitability, and customer lifetime value (CLTV). This helped steer away from low-value offline retail stores, towards high-value online trading.
Revenue Growth:
- 46% increase in Net Revenue in the UK.
- Full year 2023 vs 2022.
Reduced Churn:
- 15% decrease in new customer churn in France.
- Driven by accurate Machine Learning models, which predict and intervene with at-risk customers.
Customer Base Growth:
- 44% increase in active customers.
- Enabled by deep customer segmentation, targeting users across multi-channel campaigns.
In 2024 Chat-Bot will become state-of-the-art, equipped with LLM technology, and genAI will enable natural language queries, democratising access to insights through text-to-SQL.
