MTN Nigeria Turns to Nokia's Machine Learning Tech to Improve Customer Experience

In an effort to gain an edge in a highly competitive mobile services market, MTN Nigeria is to deploy customer insight, analytics and machine learning tools from Nokia to improve its ability to identify and deal with service quality issues.

The operator is to use Nokia's Cognitive Analytics for Customer Insight (formerly CEM on Demand), which, according to the vendor, uses machine learning algorithms to provide "a complete view of customer satisfaction, revenue, and device and network performance." In conjunction it will deploy Nokia's Service Quality Manager (SQM) software.

Combined, these two tools will enable the operator to gain an "holistic picture of service behaviour and performance," and accelerate "the identification of service issues, like poor voice call and data session quality, and prioritize improvements based on customer and business impact."

The operator will also use Nokia's Analytics Office Services to "facilitate its transformation to a customer-centric business," which, in plain language, means it should gain better insights and be able to introduce automated processes that will help it to provide improved services, enhance its customer satisfaction and net promoter score (NPS) levels and reduce churn.

"We are confident that the partnership with Nokia will be invaluable in our ongoing effort to find new and more innovative ways to deliver superior experiences for our customers," gushed MTN Nigeria's CTO Hassan ElChami.

Such "superior experiences" might be needed in the coming months and years if the operator is to retain its status as the leading mobile operator in Nigeria. MTN Nigeria is currently the leading mobile operator in a market with about 155 million users. It commands a market share of about 37% while Globacom has about 26% and Airtel Nigeria almost 25%.

But the number four operator, 9Mobile, is currently up for sale, and both Globacom and Airtel are both hoping to acquire its network and 12% market share. (See Bidders Line Up for Nigeria's 9Mobile: Reports.)

There are many other bidders but if either of those two are successful they would have about the same market clout as MTN Nigeria, and so make customer experience an even more important factor in the competitive and still growing market.