Survey: Telecom Retailers Adapt to Relentlessly Changing Industry Through Interconnected Commerce

September 07, 2023 at 12:30 PM EDT

Retail of all kinds is faced with ever-changing consumer behaviors—and telecom retail has a host of added complexities, making this industry even tougher for players to get ahead. Hit with a global pandemic, the threat of recession, labor shortages, evolving customer demands, increasing competition from all angles, and mind-boggling new technologies, wireless retail operators continue to demonstrate innovation and fortitude.

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Extensive survey by iQmetrix, North America’s only provider of Interconnected Commerce solutions for telecom, reveals wireless retail operators’ resilience and adaptability in the face of market competition and evolving consumer behaviors. Image: iQmetrix

iQmetrix, North America’s only provider of Interconnected Commerce solutions for telecom, carried out the second of its bi-annual survey of industry professionals across the US and Canada to glean insights and predictions on these and other wireless retail trends. Respondents came from top-tier telecom carriers, well-known wireless brands, authorized retailers of all sizes, wireless kiosk operators, cable/internet operators moving into wireless, handset manufacturers, and more.

The resulting whitepaper—The Future is Interconnected Commerce: 2023 Trends in Telecom Retail—swhich launches today, reveals that wireless retail operators remain optimistic about business outlooks, albeit with a little more caution than two years earlier. The respondents’ answers demonstrated their adaptability to meet customers where they are and rise to their new expectations, which is essential if retailers are going to win today's race for customer loyalty. And the results proved that only by interconnecting the many disparate systems and players involved in telecom retail will businesses be able to thrive.

The survey report breaks the results down into six sections, including business outlook, challenges ahead, device activations, the role of the physical store, unified commerce strategies, and the sector’s future state.

Key findings on business outlook include:

Nearly 59% of respondents predicted growth in device sales over the next three years
Almost 79% said smart home device sales will increase over the next three years
Over 68% said competition today is higher than three years ago
Over 59% cited continued economic uncertainty as their biggest challenge
Nearly 86% see the business opportunity in eSIM, although a third of those also see a threat
Nearly 46% have noticed a decline in smartphone demand over the past three years

When it comes to new technologies:

Close to 66% of respondents have implemented contactless payments, with most of those having kept them post-pandemic
More than 63% think it's likely AI analytics of customer behavior will increasingly shape retail strategies
Over 76% predict a greater focus on customer loyalty and rewards programs

Stacy Hamer, Chief Operating Officer at iQmetrix, said, “No matter what problem gets thrown into this industry, they will transform and find new ways to engage with their customers to win that loyalty race. And we will be there, giving them the support and technology they need to do that. It makes me so proud to be a part of this evolution.”

Trish Sale, Vice President of Product at iQmetrix, added, “Ultimately, it is about the ability to pull together all those carrier and retailer systems seamlessly so that you can have a frictionless experience, you can transact within wireless, you can get that activation to happen without having to swivel between systems—without having that disjointed and disconnected experience. And you can only do that with Interconnected Commerce.”

View the survey results and download the report here.

About iQmetrix

iQmetrix is the only provider of Interconnected Commerce software solutions for telecom retail. Interconnected Commerce is a complete set of software and technologies that are modular, flexible, and have telecom-specific capabilities, enabling telecom retailers to provide an uplifting experience for their customers. We empower telecom retailers to transact, activate, and fulfill products, as well as operate their business, and unify the online and in-store experiences. We interconnect the entire industry, bridging carriers, retailers, manufacturers, and a huge ecosystem of vendors and external system integrations.

Since 1999, we’ve been passionate about helping the leading brands in telecom to grow by providing best-in-class software, services, and expertise that enables them to adapt and thrive. Our solutions powered $17BN in sales last year, handling nearly 60 million invoices and 22 million activations, and are used by approximately 320,000 telecom retail professionals across 1,000 clients. iQmetrix is a privately held software-as-a-service (SaaS) company with employees in Canada, the U.S., India, and Europe. For more information, please visit www.iqmetrix.com.