The Future of Telco Product Catalogs: From Static Lists to Dynamic, Contextual Experiences
We’ll explore how the technological landscape has changed and what telcos can do to create next-gen product catalogs that are dynamic and incorporate rule-based engines that fuel upsell, cross-sell, and loyalty — all while slashing time-to-market for new service offers.
Telco AI and Dynamic, Customized Offers Are Now Here
With improvements in machine learning and AI technology over the last several years (including GenAI tech like ChatGPT), a goldmine of actionable customer and network data that telcos have at their disposal, and speed and bandwidth available in today’s 5G mobile environment, this all aligns to provide telco providers the opportunity to create dynamic offers to their customers.
An IDC study found that “62% of telecommunications providers are using generative AI to enhance customer experience scenarios with that number increasing to 90% by 2027.”
MNOs and MVNOs are already leveraging their platforms to boost their reach into new markets by developing partnerships with companies across industries. These partnerships result in a wide variety of value-added services (VAS) and over the top (OTT) offerings to their customer base.
Restaurants
To understand the benefits of shifting from a static service menu to a dynamic one, lets look first at a restaurant example relative to their menu.
In a static menu, food and drink offerings are often optimized based on psychological buyer behavior research, past buying patterns, and profit margins. But once designed and printed, they are only modified periodically based on customer purchase behavior. What it doesn’t do is take other relevant factors into account and change very often.
Alternatively, a dynamic menu technology (often incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies) can allow for factors like time of day (breakfast vs lunch vs dinner options), prioritizing placement based on customer purchase frequency or inventory level in real time.
Wendy’s, the fast-food burger chain, just announced that in 2025 they’ll be rolling out a test of “dynamic pricing.” They are investing $20 million in digital menu boards to change pricing on demand. It could provide special offers, upsells and discounts to bring in more traffic during slower hours.
Rideshare
Uber, the rideshare behemoth, uses dynamic pricing as a core part of their service. Acting as an intermediary, like a stock brokerage making trades, prices are set based on supply (drivers) and demand (passengers). Prices must be set in a way that will ensure a purchase is made. That means the driver makes enough money to get them to accept the fare, and the rider can justify the cost vs taking a taxi, renting a car, or carpooling with someone, or driving their own car.
One of the ways Uber selects prices is based on the number of available drivers in the area. Increasing fare prices encourage more Uber drivers to get on the road and pick up riders instead of just staying home or doing other work. Uber also boosts prices when demand is high such as on Friday and Saturday nights (when people are dining out, going to bars), during evening rush hour traffic, and for big events and festivals.
Telco Call Center
While not a dynamic service menu specifically, telcos are starting to implement AI technology in their call centers to serve up more consistent responses to customers and make context-specific offers. Verizon has deployed AI in their call centers to train staff (given that call centers tend to be high-turnover jobs where knowledge loss is a big concern), provide live call transcription and virtual assistants (“personal research assistants”) to support customer service agents and help them more quickly deliver a satisfactory result to for both the customer and for Verizon.
Dynamic Product and Service Offer Implementation
Implementing market-driven dynamic pricing, customized experiences, and targeted lifestyle-based offers can help telcos boost overall revenues by not letting offers go stale, reduce churn/increase loyalty by better aligning product and service offerings with customer needs through better segmentation, and gain market share/improve competitiveness in the market.
These improvements are not without risks though. Customer perception that prices are being raised unfairly, regulatory restrictions on customer data usage, and legacy technology upgrades needed to meet the requirements of AI-driven dynamic models all stand as potential barriers to dynamic menu offering implementations.
Telcos Have Begun Dynamic Offering Implementations
What companies have started this transition from static offering models to more dynamic ones, leveraging available technologies? Several in fact. Here’s how they’re doing that.
Micro-segmentation. Customers are grouped into micro segments based on app and data usage patterns, device type, length of time as a customer, likelihood of churn, and their lifetime value. Deutsche Telekom uses all this along with an AI technology backbone to constantly evolve product offers and promote them to customers based on contextual situations. This allows for better targeted offers. DT is now promoting AI usage further through the 2025 rollout of “Perplexity,” its AI answer search engine.
Next Best Action (NBA) Recommendation. AI and ML technologies are used to predict which action or offer is most likely to result in a successful upsell or cross-selling opportunity, what is going to reduce churn or what one will improve the company’s net promoter score. Vodafone uses these NBA recommendation engines to determine when and if to make a discount offer, when it is appropriate to suggest a service upgrade or new content bundle. These offers can be then made within the app or via SMS communication. Vodafone is leveraging AI across the board. Here’s how they are doing that.
Personalized Content Recommendations. With flexible product offerings, customers can become more engaged in the buying process. AI technologies help guide the customer to offers that align with their interests and drive improved margins and lower churn through better engagement. EE’s Smart Plans allow customers to swap benefits (like Apple Music, Netflix, roaming passes) at any time, driven by a recommendation layer in EE’s CRM.
Dynamic Catalog. Instead of relying on a fixed product list that is locked in time, a dynamic catalog instead allows for plans, discounts, and add-on offers to be created in real time, tailoring offers to specific users or user profiles, and both making these offers either through a call center rep or by presenting customized offers to the customer in app. Telefonica’s Aura system offers these up in their app and chat channels.
triPica: The Catalog Built for the Digital Telco Era
triPica’s cloud-native, AI-powered catalog is purpose-built for complex product portfolios and the race to launch offers faster, acting as the single source of truth across BSS and OSS to accelerate time-to-market and fuel growth.
Democratized Product Creation. triPica empowers business teams to configure and launch new offers, bundles, and promotions in minutes, leaving the technical teams to define deeper rules and governance. This “democratization of product creation” slashes IT dependency, optimizes organizational efficiency, and enables rapid response to market shifts.
Seamless Interoperability. triPica is fully TM Forum Open API compliant and supports catalog federation, enabling CSPs to integrate legacy catalogs as they modernize, without disrupting existing systems. This makes it the perfect bridge for operators evolving into digital service providers.
AI-Driven Growth. Embedded AI, ML, and GenAI analytics help CSPs predict offer performance, avoid cannibalization, optimize promotions, and even recommend retiring outdated products — directly addressing Omdia’s call for smarter lifecycle management.
Future-Ready by Design. Built cloud-native from the ground up, triPica supports advanced use cases, while ensuring consistency across every channel. In short, triPica delivers: a catalog that is not a weak link but the strategic nerve center of a digital telco.
Getting the Technology Right
With the right cloud-based BSS system supporting it, a telco isn’t held hostage to legacy in-house technology that may not be designed to handle the ever-changing regulatory requirements, heavy data processing requirements of AI, and the offer and billing requirements that a dynamic model would require. triPica has a BSS that supports telcos in quickly launching greenfield digital brands (such as Yoodo) as well as support telcos deliver dynamic offerings through their AI compliant technology backbone.
Find out about how triPica can support your transition into AI-supported product and service offerings to improve profitability, push back the competition, and reduce churn.
