Smart Axiata partners with Global Wavenet to offer enhanced RBT in Cambodia

Smart Axiata Chief Marketing Officer Stjepan Udovicic (left) and Global Wavenet CEO Suren Pinto 

Cambodia’s leading mobile telecommunications operator, Smart Axiata, has partnered with Global Wavenet (www.globalwavenet.com) to offer value-added features to its existing Ring Back Tone (RBT) offering. The new RBT functionality deployed on Smart’s advanced telco systems is an extension of Wavenet’s award winning Unified VAS (Value Added Services) solutions portfolio that has been deployed across multiple blue-chip telco organisations in over 20+ countries, including Africa, Latin America and Asia. 

Smart Axiata is a part of Axiata Group Berhad – one of Asia’s largest telecommunications groups. The company has always been at the forefront of mobile technology advancements especially in Cambodia, where it currently serves eight million subscribers. As the country’s leading mobile telco operator, Smart offers customers a unique RBT service, enabling them to listen to their favourite tunes when making calls (through their Tunes4U solution), select the latest tracks from popular artists, or share their favourite songs with friends (Tunes4Friends) as well as manage their tune selections via the SmartNas app. 

With the new Wavenet solution, Smart Tunes customers are now able to access Smart’s advanced RBT service with simple voice commands. A customer will be presented with a menu allowing interactive selection of preferred tunes, whilst also offering the option to activate those tunes on the same call, instantly in one go. 

This enhanced IVR solution allows Smart to extend service efficiencies and offer a superior customer experience while bridging the gap between legacy IVR services by leveraging cutting edge technology advancements in the IT and digital world. This will further aid in the seamless function of ‘customer self-servicing’, and reduce the added effort required in the end-to-end product delivery which may require multiple channel integrations.

From a technical perspective, Wavenet will connect Smart’s platforms to Wavenet’s service creation environment ‘Fusion Studio’, which enables external communications over SOAP and REST. The IVR applications are developed inside Wavenet’s Fusion Studio and the call flows are created using an advanced graphical user interface (GUI) that includes drag and drop features to easily create and design visual IVR call flows. The comprehensive IVR solution is geared for operational efficiencies integrating into the customer’s Caller RBT platforms, the Call center, CRM and CBS systems, with USSD, SMSC via SMPP. 

Smart Axiata Chief Marketing Officer Stjepan Udovicic commented, “More customers are demanding personalised solutions, which has resulted in the increase in demand for ring back tones in Cambodia. As a company at the forefront of enhanced telco solutions, our partnership with Wavenet will ensure that our customers are presented with fresh solutions backed by cutting-edge technology and as proof of our commitment towards providing Smart’s customers an exceptional customer experience. Furthermore, the partnership will assist us in the ability to offer a superior IVR experience to customers and further establish our presence as a digital first company in the Cambodian market.” 

Wavenet’s founder and CEO Suren Pinto on this occasion stated, “We are excited to partner with Smart as the technology enabler for this advanced IVR solution where its empowered by Wavenet’s core platforms such as the innovative Fusion Service Creator and the Spark IVR platform enable telcos to truly transform the traditional VAS space from legacy to digital. Our Unified VAS solutions provides telecommunication operators opportunity to extend their mature SMS and IVR product lifecycles resulting in additional sources of income. 

“The product innovation approach we take at Wavenet considering 16+ years of experience in the global telco market, looking in to the practicalities and the next-level evolution of each of our solutions, makes real sense to our clients’ businesses. The close partnership approach we take in to working together with our clients as an extension of their business, forms the base of our successful partnerships with blue-chip telcos like Smart, and become a key contributor to our leadership position in the Unified VAS solutions market.”