Smart Communications Inc. teamed up with Google Cloud to improve the accessibility of essential digital services for Filipinos.
Under the collaboration, Smart will become one of the first communication services providers (CSPs) in the Asia Pacific region to adopt Telecom Subscriber Insights, 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.
“Our collaboration with Google Cloud to be the first communication services provider in Asia Pacific to adopt Telecom Subscriber Insights will empower us to better serve Filipino mobile users whenever and wherever they need us,” said Smart senior vice president and head of consumer business Alex Caeg.
“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,” he said.
With the Philippines’ digital economy set to grow 20 percent year-on-year between now and 2025, mobile connectivity plays an increasingly central role in how Filipinos access essential services like food, transport and the purchase of daily items, he said.
By leveraging Telecom Subscriber Insights to analyze customer data securely hosted on Google Cloud, Smart will gain richer 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 speed of digital change has created growing anxiety amongst Filipinos about running low on data in their exact moment of need—from booking a ride-hailing service on an app, to completing important financial transactions on the go,” said PLDT chief transformation and customer officer Emmanuel Lorenzana.
“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,” he said.
Smart 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—such as Google’s first-party foundation models for summarizing text and maintaining an ongoing conversation—with Telecom Subscriber Insights.
“As CSPs are increasingly put under pressure to deliver transformative customer experiences tailored to individual needs, the ability to navigate and understand complex datasets has become critical for achieving success,” said Gabriele Di Piazza, senior director for global product management telecommunications at Google Cloud.
“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,” DI Piazza said.