Telco APIs and creating customer value: a live discussion with Telefónica Tech

"Get out of the office, talk to customers and discover the use case.” – Glyn Povah, Global Director of Product, Identity for Telefónica Tech.

Telco API initiatives have never been short on enthusiasm and optimism. But revenue and delivering customer value? Those have been harder to come by.

Our guest on Zero-Touch Telecom Live this week has designed and refined telco API market engagement strategies over the course of more than a decade. His approach, which is built around close customer collaboration has successfully addressed market needs and offers a blueprint for the broader telecom community to do the same. The replay of our interview with Telefónica Tech's Glyn Povah is available now below.

Speaking on his experience collaborating with major UK banks, Glyn noted, “Most of my business assumptions have proven to be wrong. It’s always great to have that first meeting with the customer to just listen and ask questions. Sometimes, they speak a completely different language.”

He expounded on the approach he found positions customer engagements around telco APIs for maximum success:

• Focus on use case discovery. APIs are most successful when they are built from an inherent understanding of customer pain points. Glyn shared how initial meetings with banking clients revealed the significance of balancing security with user convenience. By “speaking the customer’s language” and understanding their KPIs, it was easier to align API solutions with real business outcomes.
• Build for scalable solutions. Co-creation with customers goes beyond isolated solutions. Glyn highlighted the value of creating APIs that scale across industries and markets, noting initiatives like GSMA’s Open Gateway that help standardize solutions for global reach.
• Analyze results and refine the approach. Using the example of a high-impact solution like fraud detection where managing false positives is essential, Glyn underscored how collaborating with customers on data science insights makes it easier to refine solutions that can meet each customer’s specific tolerance levels, increasing API adoption and effectiveness.

Through collaboration, Glyn and his team have worked consistently with customers to develop APIs that now support critical business needs. Check out our conversation replay now for some of the use cases they successfully pursued, including improved fraud prevention and authentication. Glyn’s article on this topic from last week’s Zero-Touch Telecom newsletter is available here.

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