Consolidation among communications service providers (CSPs) has been on the upswing for years. And, with a convergence-friendly regulatory climate now in place in the U.S., mergers and acquisitions (M&As) could shift into overdrive.

There are many compelling reasons why CSPs are chomping at the bit to combine forces. Subscriber and revenue growth, cost savings, and access to new technology for rolling out emerging Internet of Things (IoT) and 5G wireless services top the list. Other motivations include broadening geographical distribution (e.g., Charter Communications’ merger with Time Warner Cable), market expansion (AT&T and DirecTV), content access (AT&T and Time Warner), and boosting mobile advertising (Verizon, scooping up AOL and Yahoo).

Moreover, through consolidation, CSPs can lower customer acquisition costs, improve retention rates, and increase average revenue per user (APRU). All worthy goals. But to achieve them, CSPs must go the extra mile to stay connected to the needs of subscribers, even as their companies expand. The kicker? It’s hard enough for them to do that already, and consolidation only makes it harder. Here are four ways CSPs can bake customer centricity into their consolidation strategy.

Make customer experience a top priority
Back in the day when CSPs had few competitors, they could take their subscribers for granted. And most did. That’s no longer a viable tactic. Thanks to cord-cutting options and disruptive newcomers like Google and Facebook, CSPs are seeing their subscribers—and their revenues—fleeing by the millions. And yet, despite efforts in recent years to improve services, telecoms, mobile carriers, cable operators, and internet service providers still occupy some of the lowest rungs in the latest industry comparison surveys, such as net promoter scores (NPS).

One of the best ways CSPs can boost customer satisfaction is by establishing formal customer experience (CX) programs. A holistic approach that encompasses the entirety of a customer’s history with a company over time, CX orchestrates all customer-related activities across all functional areas and lines of business. CX is the difference between noting that a customer service issue was resolved (something most operators already do) and capturing that a customer is still unhappy that there was a problem in the first place (something almost none of them track).

To provide consistently rewarding customer experiences, CSPs will need to overcome the dysfunction stemming from their historically fragmented processes and departmental silos, layers of complexity that greatly increase with M&A activity, by the way. They must also overhaul their creaky legacy operations and business systems, collectively known as OSS/BSS. Augmented with cloud-based options, these tired solutions can deliver the real-time digital agility CSPs need to respond smartly to subscriber demands.

Use data to serve customers, not just bill
CSPs have more data about their customers than practically any other industry. But so far, most have used that data for only narrow, blatantly self-serving purposes, such as documenting data consumption for billing or creating more targeted mobile ads. And yet hidden within that data are insights into customer behavior, preferences, and opinions that reveal how subscribers feel about a provider overall.

For example, with cognitive analytics, like those from IBM Watson, providers can predict which customers are likely to churn and take proactive steps to retain them. Data analytics can also detect which services give subscribers the most trouble, or which subscribers would be most receptive to upsells—handy information to have when you’re expanding offerings through consolidation.

The problem is, many providers can’t gain those insights because subscriber data is buried in separate systems for CRM, billing, accounting, and provisioning, among others. Again, cloud-based platforms can help them bridge information silos. With that data, they can deepen customer connections and increase retention by offering more intuitive services, surgically targeted incentives, and delight-inducing rewards based on customer usage history.

Expand customer self-service
Many of today’s subscribers are not just digitally savvy, they’re also more technically capable. Above all, they’re impatient. They want to explore service options, place orders, renew, and have everything fulfilled instantaneously, using any device or channel. Ideally with minimal clicks or agent intervention. CSPs have been slow to deploy self-service options that are on par with digital trendsetters like Amazon or eBay.

Self-service becomes even more critical as CSPs ramp up deployment of new smart home, connected car, mobile video, and augmented reality services that M&A deals make possible. These new services, along with new devices, product bundles, and pricing plans that accompany them, can be very confusing for subscribers. CSPs can help them navigate new offers and increase conversions by deploying brainier chatbots, richer online FAQs, and interactive guides that truly empower subscribers to get answers, resolve problems, and complete transactions without assistance.

Make customer service more personal
Establishing truly personal connections goes a long way to keeping customers loyal when competitors start waving the latest race-to-the-bottom pricing deal or multi-play bundle. Indeed, according to a 2016 Accenture report, 75% of consumers are more likely to buy from companies that know them by name, make recommendations based on past purchases, or know their purchase history.

Personalization becomes even more essential with consolidation, because customers can often feel overlooked or ignored as providers gain new subscribers and capabilities.

Technology now makes it possible for CSPs to bring old-school personal service to every subscriber interaction and touch point. For example, emails and chat sessions can be pre-populated with personal greetings. Newer omnichannel contact center solutions can capture all information on first contact, so subscribers never have to repeat themselves from one agent to the next. And a subscriber’s social communications can be merged with CRM and contact center solutions so nothing falls through the cracks.

It’s all about the customer
All indications are that M&A activity is here to stay. Comms are banking on consolidation as they jockey for best position in pricing, packaging, bandwidth, coverage, and content deals. The specifics may change, but those battles will continue. When all is said and done, however, the CSPs that will consistently grow their subscriber bases and revenue streams are those who ensure that their customers always come first, no matter how often they merge, how much technology morphs, or which disruptions come down the pike next.

About the Author:
Brendan O'Brien is chief innovation officer and co-founder at Aria Systems, a leading cloud-billing provider. In 2002, he introduced the world to cloud billing and innovated database-driven, enterprise-grade web applications before the concept of “cloud” was on the horizon and is among the industry's foremost thinkers on IoT and recurring revenue.

Photo by Jose Luis Pelaez Inc./Getty Images

Telecom industry revenue has traditionally relied on providing the infrastructure that brings content to people. On the face of things, how can this model fail? You can’t well watch YouTube without an internet connection, right?

That may be true, but the age of streaming media has posed a difficult challenge to communications service providers (CSPs). Providing the infrastructure to support the bandwidth and speed that digital customers demand is expensive, but they are not willing to pay much more for the connection. Where will CSPs find new revenue streams?

Fight Content with Content
One answer is content, and this strategy is already becoming visible in the industry. Verizon absorbed both Yahoo! and AOL in recent years to bring in their content-driven ad dollars and massive ad networks. And AT&T is still working on a blockbuster deal to merge with entertainment giant Time Warner. Last month Time Warner shareholders voted to sell the entertainment company to telecommunications giant AT&T for $85.4-billion, and with an administration less concerned with antitrust regulation, the deal may finally move forward.

However, they can’t just provide a platform for distributing it as they have in the past. Cable television has quickly become a dinosaur because it provides one-size-fits-all (and one price pays for all) packages in a pick-and-choose, pay-for-what-I-use world. Today’s customers demand more choices, and CSPs must provide content packaged in every way that people wish to consume it.

Cable companies have yet to stem the cord-cutting tide from born-digital players like Netflix, Hulu and YouTube. But they can still learn some valuable lessons from them and maybe even steal back some customers. But it must be done in ways that do not make consumers feel like they are re-attaching the cord.

RELATED: SVOD-Smacked

It’s Not Just About the Platform
It’s about how the content is presented. With more than 1 billion hours of video streamed every day and the associated ad revenue flowing in, YouTube has been quite a success for Google. The Internet juggernaut picked up YouTube in 2006 for $1.65 billion — which seemed like an insane price tag for a bunch of cat videos back then — but it turned out to be one of the best investments the company ever made. Since then, YouTube has made some big moves to diversify the type of content it offers and how it is monetized and sold.

At first, YouTube butted heads with the networks by allowing their content to be rebroadcast on the internet for free. At the time, most major networks didn’t even have streaming available, and YouTube looked to be a major disruptor to their ad dollar-driven monetization model. YouTube saw this as an opportunity to widen its audience and offer more valuable content, so they struck up ad revenue sharing deals with the networks instead of battling with them in court.

YouTube has continued to diversify its offerings over the last few years. Its first foray in subscription offerings was YouTube Red, which for $10 a month, offers exclusive ad-free content from some of YouTube’s biggest stars and access to Google Play Music. But just taking away the ads was not a big enough differentiator to attract a big audience — analysts estimate between 1.5 to 2 million people signed up. That’s small beans in an industry that counts success in the billions.

But now YouTube is taking a shot directly over the bow of the CSPs with a $35-a-month subscription TV service. YouTube TV will include content from more than 40 networks, including ESPN, ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC. It may seem just like cable TV at first. But once you consider the cachet that YouTube has with millennial cable-cutters and the fact that it works seamlessly across devices, it starts to make a lot more sense.

RELATED: YouTube TV Goes Live in Handful of Markets

It’s All About Choice (and Service)
What is more important than YouTube impinging on cable TV is its strategy — diversifying its product offerings to give customers more choice, more ways to consume and more ways to pay. It’s the complete opposite of the cable industry’s old couple-sizes-fits-all packages with dozens of channels nobody wants to watch and wonky streaming offerings that are hard to use across devices. YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon and others are offering customers more ways to watch at more price points with more diverse product offerings. You pick what to watch, whether or not to see ads, watch it on whatever device you want, and pay for as much premium service or content as you wish.

Another lesson CSPs need to learn is how easy these born-digital companies make it to choose. Point, click, pay, watch. That’s it. Changing your service in any way with the cable company is about as simple as string theory and as pleasant as pulling out your hair. If this does not change, then the customers won’t come back no matter what they offer.

The Beast in the Back Office
To play with the Internet big boys, though, CSPs must address legacy OSS/BSS systems that they have traditionally used for billing. The systems that run their communications business can’t support the rapid time to market, the speed and agility for rapid innovation, nor the interoperability with non-telco-specific systems required to fully serve digital-age customers. To compete with its disruptors, CSPs must adopt a bi-modal architecture strategy in which an agility platform manages monetization of the new business to accelerate time to market and revenue streams of new product offerings, bundles, and promotions. Once that is addressed, they can begin to offer the multidimensional choice that their customers are demanding.

Brendan O'Brien is chief innovation officer and co-founder at Aria Systems. In 2002 he introduced the world to cloud billing and innovated database-driven, enterprise-grade Web applications before the concept of “cloud” was on the horizon. Aria, the number-one ranked cloud-billing provider, empowers enterprises to monetize a wider variety of product offerings, retain their customers for longer periods of time and grow recurring revenue at scale.

Image by Donald Iain Smith/Getty Images.