Revolutionizing Singapore’s telco experiences

As the first telecommunications operator (telco) in Singapore to offer 24-hour customer service, M1 has always prided itself in its customer-centric approach and commitment to customers.

As the first telecommunications operator (telco) in Singapore to offer 24-hour customer service more than two decades ago, M1 has always prided itself in its customer-centric approach and commitment to delighting customers through forward-looking, innovative solutions.

A pioneer in the industry, M1 has been associated with many firsts in Singapore and around the region, including being the first in Singapore to launch MMS in 2002, offering the first nationwide 4G service in Southeast Asia in 2012 and Singapore’s first counterless retail concept for telcos in 2014. With each first, the telco has kept the customer at the center of it all, continuously offering value and the best experiences. Most recently, M1 is the first and only telco in Singapore to open up 5G access to all its customers without limitation on the number of signups or restrictions.

To keep up with industry disruptions and evolving customer expectations, M1 has gone through various cycles of transformations through the years. Today, M1 is committed to a new mission to move beyond being a pure mobile operator to a more holistic digital network operator, providing an entire suite of communications services including mobile, fixed line and fiber offerings, to over two million customers.

Gearing up for digital transformation

The telco’s transformation journey was well underway even before COVID-19 hit. And in early 2020, when customer interactions had to shift almost entirely from physical to digital touchpoints overnight due to the pandemic, the M1 team was already prepared with a vision in place and was able to quickly ramp up their plans to meet changing demands.

Marking the brand’s evolution to being Singapore’s first truly digital communication provider, M1 recently refreshed its brand identity, complemented with new made-to-measure offerings and an enhanced customer experience journey — including an overhauled digital experience roadmap, supported by Adobe.

Working closely with M1, the Adobe team provided technical consultancy, testing and proof-of-concepts every step of the way, as the telco reshapes its legacy data strategy and shifts to a customer journey-based approach to delivering digital experiences.

Hyper-personalization at the heart of brand loyalty

Personalization is at the heart of M1’s transformation. Among the new offerings in the brand refresh are the options for customers to shape their own mobile plans and gain access to hyper-personalized recommendations from the telco.

In line with that, M1 wants to make sure that the mobile and broadband options offered to each customer are similarly personalized to bring the best value to them. Throughout all marketing touchpoints and digital engagements, the customer experience at any point of an existing or potential customer’s journey must feel seamless as well.

Prior to working with Adobe, M1’s digital platform was at its early stages of delivering personalized services. To quickly ramp up on that, the first phase of the transformation focused on overhauling the customer-facing website — the primary destination online where customers come to for information and to perform important transactions with the brand. The Adobe team worked with M1 to migrate the external website onto Adobe Experience Manager (AEM), part of Adobe Experience Cloud, and implemented a new user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) to improve interactions.

With the AEM web content management system (CMS) as a foundation and other robust features and flexible tools built in, such as Adobe Analytics and Adobe Target, M1 can now safely collect, synchronize and analyze visitor data to offer hyper-personalization whenever someone visits the website.

With more entrants to the telecommunications market in recent years, M1 is the only telco in Singapore to offer this degree of hyper-personalization. Through the digital transformation, a grand overhaul of the entire business model and core technology has been effected to cater to all segments of the market across all touchpoints — be it digital or physical touchpoints.

It is more pressing than ever for M1 to build loyalty and trust with customers by anticipating their needs and offering valuable, automated recommendations at the right time. Living up to its reputation as Singapore’s most vibrant and dynamic communication company, M1 also needs to continually attract new customers by providing a frictionless and holistic experience through cutting-edge technology and made-to-measure offerings.

Holistic transformation for long-term impact

The 2021 brand refresh marks the start of a series of exciting changes and announcements over the next few months, and it’s just the beginning of M1’s transformation journey. With phase one now complete, the M1 team is working with Adobe to build out a long-term roadmap with the customer at the center.

The new web platform has created a robust data foundation for M1. While serving as a central hub providing dynamic content and personalized information to visitors and customers — including real-time insights to bills across device purchases, value-added services and more, the digital platform also allows for data analytics to be carried out, providing actionable insights for M1 starting from customer preferences, browsing behaviors, to feedback on all content interactions.

Additionally, the seamless integration between AEM solutions with other Adobe cloud solutions, such as Adobe Creative Cloud, adds long-term interoperability and returns for M1 as the telco continues to drive improvements in its customer journey to simplify and streamline the way it does business, and provide real value to customers.

“At M1, our new brand and promise of providing hyper-personalized experiences and services for our customers is supported by our digital transformation. With our partners, we want to focus on building an innovative and forward-looking technology infrastructure to keep M1 at the forefront of building Singapore’s digital economy while driving real value to our customers,” said Nathan Bell, chief digital officer, M1.