Telefónica and Cisco Personalize the Consumer Experience at Mobile World Congress

On March 2 at Mobile World Congress, Robert Franks, Managing Director, Digital Commerce at Telefónica UK and Cisco’s Kelly Ahuja, SVP, Service Provider Business, Products & Solutions, had a standing-room only crowd as part of the “Personalizing the Consumer Experience” keynote.

During their session, they emphasized how they could understand the consumer as a digital stream of information, not simply isolated pieces of information.  That stream of information, combined with in-person location details, can help both service providers and enterprises improve the experience for their consumer customers.  Both Kelly and Robert recognized that the data has always been available, but it wasn’t easily accessible.  Now Telefónica and Cisco are working together to find ways to use that information to provide a better experience for consumers.

Kelly summarized it well by stating that “personalization is going to be the key to determine the consumer experience.”  Audience members agreed with what was said in real-time tweets.

Both Robert and Kelly discussed some of the examples of enterprises and venues they are working with to provide that personalized consumer experience and open new monetization opportunities.  These compelling examples included retail stores, a stadium, a restaurant chain, and even the live Mobile World Congress Wi-Fi network.

Thanks to the active, real-time questions that arose via tweets, Robert and Kelly were able to respond to the audience quickly.  The one question that resonated frequently was about privacy and marketing to consumers without their knowledge.

Robert Franks has responded to those concerns with this statement.  “I’d like to re-assure that we take privacy extremely seriously. It was hard to explain fully in our short presentation the positioning of the service so please let me clarify. In common with many other free Internet services – including Gmail, Facebook and Twitter – Telefónica Wi-Fi is a free Internet service requiring consumers to explicitly opt-in to receive advertising in order to use the service. We are fully transparent with this opt-in, consumers can opt-out at any time and we never share any customer data with any third parties.”

Find out more about how Cisco and Telefónica are finding ways for both service providers and enterprises to provide the personalized experience for their consumer customers.  Please come visit Cisco’s and Telefonica’s booths in Hall 3 at Mobile World Congress.

Tweet us @CiscoSPMobility if you have any questions.

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