Smart, Google Cloud team up to offer better digital services to Filipinos

Smart and Google Cloud have announced their partnership for improved access to digital services.

Photo from Smart

Smart adopts Telecom Subscriber Insights to better serve subscribers

In a statement, Smart, the mobile services arm of PLDT Group, said its partnership with Google Cloud will allow better access to essential digital services for Filipinos with Searce providing technical implementation support.

This is a huge step toward our commitment to always put our customers first and provide them with the best mobile experience powered by our superior network, said Alex O. Caeg, Senior Vice President and Head of Consumer Business – Individual, Smart Communications, Inc.

Under this collaboration, Smart said it will become one of the first communication services providers (CSPs) in the Asia Pacific region to adopt Telecom Subscriber Insights. This is Google Cloud’s AI-powered solution that ingests data from various sources, provides contextual insights on subscribers’ propensity to consume services, and presents personalized recommendations to their devices for activation.

Google Cloud’s enterprise-grade AI solutions will allow us to give our subscribers simpler, quicker, and more affordable access to the data services most aligned to their evolving digital lifestyles, while guiding our efforts to boost mobile connectivity across the country, said Emmanuel C. Lorenzana, Chief Transformation and Customer Officer, PLDT Inc.

The company also said that by leveraging Telecom Subscriber Insights to analyze customer data securely hosted on Google Cloud, the telco will gain a better perspective into how Filipinos interact with digital services and the pain points they face in everyday usage—informing the development of services that equip Filipinos to better understand, manage, and optimize their mobile data consumption.

The telco said it will also utilize to design more inclusive mobile services for its subscribers by identifying patterns and gaps in connectivity. With real-time insights from customer data, Smart could, for instance, help subscribers optimize their data consumption while streaming content by alerting the user to adjust the resolution of their video. Subscribers could also be prompted to top up their prepaid plan on their device through integrations with local digital payments services, instead of locating a physical store to purchase a prepaid load.

Smart said it is looking to gain additional capabilities that enable subscribers to better interact with agents and chatbots, by integrating Google Cloud’s generative AI (gen AI) capabilities with Telecom Subscriber Insights. By using Google Cloud’s Vertex AI platform to access and tune snapshots of these models, ground their responses with its own private corpus, and integrate them into its services, Smart could allow its subscribers to interact with natural-sounding, virtual agents that offer more tailored and accessible insights into, and ways to optimize, their personal data consumption.

With Telecom Subscriber Insights, Smart can extract customer insights in real-time, while leveraging the product’s machine learning capabilities to inform digital sales opportunities based on customer readiness, price sensitivity, and lifetime value, said Gabriele Di Piazza, Senior Director, Global Product Management, Telecommunications, Google Cloud

Meanwhile, Malis Selamat, Country Manager, Philippines, and Vietnam, Google Cloud, said: 

Smart's use of Telecom Subscriber Insights demonstrates the potential for CSPs in Asia to support national digital transformation efforts with the use of AI in a secure-by-design and privacy-controlled environment while empowering consumers to make more informed decisions about their data usage in a growing and fast-evolving digital world.

What do you guys think?