In his first interview since being appointed Chief Operating Officer of M1, Mustafa Kapasi exclusively discussed the telco’s digital transformation journey, strategic partnerships, and strong focus on customer-centric, hyper-personalised innovations and future-proof solutions with Telecom Review Asia.
Can you elaborate on M1's transformation journey and the key milestones achieved during this transition?
Our transformation journey began in 2020 with a clear vision to evolve into a digital-first Telco. Singapore is one of the world’s most competitive telco markets, and we knew this digital transformation would allow us to evolve with the market and stay relevant. To us, M1 now stands for ‘'made to measure for a segment of one’.
Our ambitious programme involved a complete overhaul of our legacy technology stack with a completely new cloud-native platform. We streamlined over 200 databases into a single data lake, which enables real-time data analytics and provides actionable insights to better serve customers from a single source of truth.
One of the key milestones on this journey was the successful migration of our consumer base to this new platform, which was completed in March 2024. M1 now has the ability to hyper-personalise products and services and cater to customers’ specific needs. For instance, we can alert frequent travellers to any updates or promotions around roaming plans such as M1 Data Passport.
Digital transformation is a continuous journey, and people transformation is an important piece in the roadmap to becoming a telco of the future. In short, M1 had to become a digital organisation, not unlike digitally-native organisations like Lazada and Amazon. To ensure we are constantly primed to evolve, we changed the way our staff works and how operations are structured. For instance, we introduced “sprints” and now have several product teams working on multiple release cycles at one time, with 'scrum masters’ who work to keep each sprint together. This is relatively unheard of in the telco industry, but we believe this way of working is the key to keeping M1 agile and helps to set us apart.
What strategies did M1 implement to transition away from a traditional retail footprint towards a self-service model?
Our primary objective in digital transformation has been to enhance our customer service by offering a more flexible and personalised experience. As we transitioned towards a self-service model, we empowered customers to manage their transactions online, resulting in nearly 90% of transactions becoming digital and 85% of orders being fully automated. This shift has led to significant improvements in our customer service and satisfaction metrics, including a notable increase in our Net Promoter Score (NPS).
Our strategies are anchored in customer centricity, and our goal is to always improve the experience of our customers through digital innovation. To this end, we enabled personalised plans across 6 million product combinations, reducing configuration time from two weeks to mere seconds at the touch of our customers’ fingertips. As a result, we’ve seen online purchases rise fourfold since 2019, as customers can shop and receive deliveries without visiting a M1 store.
Another key shift we made was e-billing. Today, e-bills are the preferred method for 80% of M1’s customer base, a remarkable eightfold increase from 2019. The almost instant generation of e-bills helps prevent physical bills from being lost in the mail and shortens delivery time by 3 to 5 days. Customers no longer need to visit the nearest store to pay their phone bills, as they can easily and conveniently do so on the My M1+ app. These have also helped eliminate manual process inefficiencies such as late payment charges due to delayed bank transactions.
However, we recognise that there is still a need for a physical presence that can offer face-to-face assistance. Digital literacy varies, and customers are welcome to head down to the store for assistance. For seniors who may need additional assistance, we have digital ambassadors in-store to help guide them through the My M1+ App or answer their questions about their phone plans.
This is what we mean by customer-centricity – it is imperative that we meet our various customer segments where they are and ensure they can receive the support and assistance they need, in the way that works best for them.
How has M1 partnered with other leading technology providers to improve operational efficiency or customer service experience? Can you give an example?
M1 frequently works alongside world-leading technology companies to unlock new opportunities or create new value for our customers.
Digital transformation has helped improve our operational efficiency. By automating and integrating our internal workflows, M1 employees can save man-hours and use this time to focus on higher-value and more urgent tasks.
Separately, as part of our digital transformation efforts, we created an environment that supported hyper-personalised digital interactions with customers. By implementing reusable APIs, we delivered new services and features more rapidly and reduced our time-to-market by 25%. Further, we wanted a single view of our customers that allowed us to tap into rich data and identify robust insights to improve customer service experience.
For instance, we’re currently seeing a trend of customers across demographics moving away from customer service phone calls and towards a live chat with our agents in the My M1+ app. In the short term, we are looking at enhancing the operations of the live chat function with a time-saving feature where a customer can send a message and, rather than waiting on standby for a live response, receive a notification when an agent has replied.
We’re also delivering more personalised content to customers visiting our website. For instance, customers see different website interfaces depending on their past interactions with M1.
How is M1 addressing the future needs and expectations of customers, and what innovative advancements can be expected in the near term?
At M1, we are committed to staying ahead of customer needs and expectations through continuous innovation and improvement. Our agile foundation allows us to be responsive and proactive in addressing future demands, needs and expectations.
In the long term, we are looking towards sophisticated AI tools that can enhance our customer service support as we recognise a growing preference for digital interactions. We are looking to augment our chatbot Mindy, which launched in 2019 and serves 100,000 unique customers monthly, with generative AI (GenAI) capabilities that enhance response accuracy and relevance.
Similarly, developments in GenAI have surfaced new use cases in the customer service sector, such as functioning as an assistant agent. By listening to the customer call or watching the conversation, GenAI tools can prompt a human customer service agent with relevant, useful information. For example, if the customer is asking about roaming plans, the GenAI tool can quickly provide the agent with the information, helping agents to assist customers faster and more efficiently.
As we strategically partner with vendors for AI-based solutions, we are also building awareness about AI capabilities among our employees across all departments. For example, our marketing team is using GenAI tools in their content creation work. M1’s Digital Office is prioritising training and has planned for more AI-related sessions to build our base of AI knowledge throughout the company, enabling employees to leverage innovative tech solutions that enhance productivity, efficiency, as well as the overall employee experience.
