True Corporation unveils 2024 strategy with AI, digital growth focus

True Corporation, the Thai telecommunications conglomerate, disclosed its tripartite strategic model for 2024. This strategy encompasses modernising its digital infrastructure, offering distinctive services to its customer base and redefining the company through the application of artificial intelligence (AI) and cutting-edge technologies.

The company’s CEO, Manat Manavutiveth, has identified five disruptive elements for the current year, namely, global economic uncertainty, generative AI, climate change, cyber or privacy threats, and Thai competitiveness. AI technology is pivotal for True in 2024, Manat said.

The deployment of AI technology will allow the company’s networks to be more robust and eco-friendly, enhance the abilities of the sales and call centre teams and enable its apps to deliver personalised recommendations, he expanded. Furthermore, AI can optimise the customer experience and facilitate sustainable growth.

The previous year centred on integration and restructuring following the merger of True and Total Access Communication (DTAC), which subsequently transformed into True Corp on March 1. The current year is forecasted to be a period of transformation leading to profitable growth, while 2025 is earmarked as a year with a focus on sustainable profits and value creation.

Manat stated that True aspires to be the market leader in three categories this year: unparalleled customer experience, digital growth, and future-ready performance.

In line with this, Sharad Mehrotra, Deputy CEO of True, highlighted that the first strategic pillar relates to delivering a seamless customer experience via its omnichannel strategy, offering hyper-personalised services and privileges to cater to the customers’ unique lifestyles.

The digital growth strategy encompasses the provision of a broad spectrum of relevant and user-friendly digital products and services, and facilitating business transformation across all industry sectors.

Market leadership

The future-ready performance concept relates to achieving sustainable growth and profitability in 2024 by harnessing new technologies to enhance service offerings, simplify its value chain, and upgrade the digital capabilities of its workforce.

True is also investigating the potential use of AI to analyse data and support its customer service team in providing bespoke services. In addition, it plans to enhance its intelligent assistant, Mari, by integrating humanoid robotics technology with AI. This will allow Mari to provide rapid and automatic information and service recommendations.

True is also developing a unified application that covers both service information and various after-sales services. The company has allocated a budget of 30 billion baht for its operational expenses for the current year, including network modernisation.

In an associated development, NBTC commissioner Pirongrong Ramasoota revealed that the NBTC board had prompted the NBTC office to compile a report on telecom service quality and call packages in the market, to assess the impact of last year’s True-DTAC merger.

The National Economic and Social Development Council’s report on Thailand’s social outlook for the fourth quarter of 2023 and overview of 2023 notes that among the issues that should be monitored is the adverse impact from telecom mergers, evidenced by increased monthly service fees for mobile phone services.

The report also highlights signal quality issues and recommends that the NBTC consider more rigorous regulatory guidelines, reported Bangkok Post.

The NBTC board had acknowledged the planned merger of True and DTAC in 2022.