An Improved Experience

Mobile operators have traditionally proved adept at attracting new customers, but after the point sale, they tend to fail in their duty as a customer-focused service provider.

Operators are often reliant on their call centre as their first point of contact with a customer after the initial sale; invariably a complaint related to drop calls, a faulty device or even bill shock. This trend has led to operators to focus on reducing call waiting times, instead of attempting to identify, and solve, the root cause of an issue to stop it happening again. This reactive approach to appeasing disgruntled subscribers has left operators resigned to high customer churn, leaving them to concentrate on winning new subscribers, rather than client retention.

Find and fix solution
By adopting a more proactive approach to monitoring and managing each subscriber’s interaction with their network, however, operators can snuff out potential issues immediately, dramatically reducing the number of complaints to the helpdesk. By implementing Customer Experience Management (CEM) systems, an operator is able to continuously address its customers’ problems in real time, independent of the network or device being used.

Operators are well aware of CEM systems’ capabilities, but are deploying them as a ‘find and fix’ solution. In most cases they are not using these systems to their full potential. This is something that Heavy Reading analyst Caroline Chappell highlights in her recently-published report, Customer Experience Management Still Needs to Bridge the Chasm. In it, she says: "The ability to capture and understand the events that can affect the customer experience in time to be able to influence and optimise that experience is a major source of differentiation for telcos."

Keeping such close tabs on every subscriber’s interaction with the network provides an operator with an endless stream of business intelligence, which could be filtered across multiple departments, such as customer service, sales and marketing.

Some of the UK’s largest operators focus on blanket marketing campaigns that only appeal to a small segment of their subscriber base, and risk alienating the majority of their customers. By analysing the customer data available, however, operators could form an accurate profile of each subscriber, based on what services they’re using, plus their device, network status and location. This knowledge would provide the carrier with a platform to offer a service closely aligned to their customers’ expectations, providing a better value for money proposition, while giving them the potential to develop new revenue streams and monetise existing services.

It gives operators the ability to tailor packages specifically to a subscriber’s usage, such as social media bundles for customers who only use mobile broadband to update their social networks. This flexibility to meet individual subscribers’ needs helps improve customer experience and boost brand advocacy.

Reducing churn
Showing this level of commitment to meeting customers’ needs and expectations enables operators to stand out in a crowded marketplace. Take for instance the example of Starhub – a Singaporean operator that chose to deploy CEM systems to not only optimise its network, but also, to study its subscribers’ behaviour in order to develop services based on their usage to differentiate themselves from their rivals.

Starhub is using CEM in its frontline battle to reduce churn and attract new customers, by proactively identifying customer issues, in order to respond to any problems in a timely and appropriate manner; as well as using the business intelligence garnered as a marketing strategy development tool. The deployment is an indicator of how vital it has become for operators to have a 360-degree view of their subscriber during the entirety of their customer life-cycle, to help differentiate themselves in a dense marketplace.

There is growing pressure mounting on service providers to manage and grow the revenue from their customer revenues. Operators have an advantage over other service providers, through being present at every stage of the customer life-cycle. By developing a closer and more enduring relationship with their customer base, carriers will begin to differentiate themselves in the market, reduce churn and boost brand advocacy.

Brian Carroll is CEO at Arantech