Why CXG: Top Technical Innovation

Overview

At the BPESA GBS Alchemy Awards 2026, CXG, part of Digital Solutions Group (DSG), was named Top Technical Innovation. The winning entry was a platform we designed and built in-house: a single converged environment that lets a consumer brand run a fully branded mobile service, with billing, CRM, network operations and customer experience all on the same technology and reporting layer.

This article explains the problem it solves, how it works, and why it matters to any brand that wants to own its mobile relationship with customers.

1. The Problem: Who Owns the Mobile Relationship?

The smartphone is the most personal device a consumer owns, and in a mobile-first economy like South Africa's it is often the first place a customer meets a brand. The global MVNO market is worth an estimated $195 billion and is growing at around 7.8% a year.

Yet consumer brands that want a share of mobile revenue have usually faced two poor options:

• Build a full mobile operation themselves, which is slow, capital-heavy and far outside most brands' core skills
• Hand the relationship to a generic mobile reseller, which dilutes the brand and gives away the customer data

Neither option lets a brand move quickly while keeping the customer. That gap is what we set out to close.

2. The Innovation: One Converged Platform

CXG combined DSG's Mobile Virtual Network Enablement (MVNE) capability with its own contact centre and digital care operation to create one converged platform. It brings together:

• Converged billing and CRM, so every customer has one record across sales, service and usage
• Revenue assurance and customer value management, built in rather than bolted on
• Digital live chat and voice care, running under the client's own brand
• A dedicated support desk and Network Operations Centre (NOC) on the same technology and reporting layer

Because everything shares one platform, a sale, an activation, a support query and a network event are all handled in one environment, carrying the client's brand from first contact through to device activation in the customer's hand. The brand keeps the customer relationship. CXG carries the operational and technical complexity underneath it.

3. AI Included, Not Added On

The platform runs on QContact, our own unified communications platform, with AI working across every interaction:

• Automatic summaries of every conversation and case, with 100% of conversations rated for customer satisfaction rather than a 10 to 20% survey sample
• Real-time sentiment analysis on every channel, with automation rules that flag distressed customers before they escalate
• Language detection that routes each message to the best-skilled agent
• A knowledge base builder that turns documents, websites and past conversations into a working knowledge base in hours, not weeks
• Spam detection that filters junk to a holding pen instead of an agent's queue

4. Delivered Without Upfront Capital

We built the platform in phases from 2022 and funded it under our on-demand delivery model, so the brand carried no upfront capital cost for the mobile build. The investment is justified against commercial return rather than cost savings alone, and it is reviewed monthly against subscriber growth, sales volumes and service levels, so the return is checked continuously rather than assumed once at the outset.

Delivery followed five clear stages: strategy and business case, value proposition design and wholesale terms, platform integration of billing, CRM and connectivity, launch and go-to-market, then ongoing operations and growth through customer value management, value-added services and care.

5. Results You Can Measure

The platform now supports more than 200,000 active subscribers, and the chat channel alone generates more than 3,500 sales a month. Service has strengthened alongside growth:

• Chat customer happiness of 92.6% against an 85% SLA
• First response in 22 seconds against a 30-second SLA
• Voice service level of 95% against an 80% target
• Repeat calls down to 17%, under a 24% target

The teams behind those numbers are engaged too: chat recorded a 97% engagement score at 100% participation, and voice 94%.

6. Solving the Hard Parts

Joining a mobile network build to a live contact centre is not simple. The main challenges were merging platforms into one billing and CX view, cutting repeat contacts around payments, upgrades and activations, keeping frontline teams aligned as value propositions changed, and separating activation fulfilment from sales in reporting so everyone could see which part of the funnel needed attention.

Each was handled the same way: find the root cause in the data first, then act through daily leadership routines and a single customer view, rather than treating the platform and the customer in silos.

The Bottom Line

Brands no longer have to choose between building a mobile business alone and giving their customers away. CXG has built and proven a platform that lets a brand own its mobile relationship, backed by the customer experience to keep it, and it works at scale month after month, not just at launch. That is why it was named Top Technical Innovation, and why we believe it is a model for brands across Africa. Talk to our team about what it could do for yours.