People don't build a relationship with a product or service; they build relationships with brands. Mobile service providers have had a miserable track record with building meaningful brand relationships with their customers. Brands give customers something to hold onto. Brands engage and permeate the atmosphere beyond the purchase transaction. Brands tell you something about the consumer. Brands don't simply meet a need; they create a space in which the customer must inhabit. Brands don't have to worry about churn. They worry about the next customer interaction. Here are a few brands, each of which have something to teach mobile service providers.

“I think brand engagement is an important aspect for loyalty,” Julio Puschel, Principal Analyst, Informa Telecoms & Media says. “Normally, operators are never among the top 50 most valuable brands. They need to start to benchmark more on how companies like Starbucks, Costco, Apple are doing in terms of providing an excellent customer experience and apply some of these ideas into their operations.”

Here are a few brands which were able to elevate their customer interactions into something more than a mere transaction and what CSPs can learn from their success.

The icon: Tiffany & Co.

The iconic blue box has come to mean much more than simply a piece of jewelry. Since it was founded in the 1830s in New York City, Tiffany has impacted the landscape and pop culture far beyond baubles and bling-bling. It's the blue box. It's the stuff of fairy tale dreams, of girls whisked off their feet. From Audrey Hepburn staring into the Tiffany & Co. storefront with her morning coffee and evening gown, the brand has represented the fulfillment of wishes, of quality that will stand the test of time.

Now telecom isn't nearly as airy-fairy as a waif dreaming of diamonds, but the aspirations of the average CSP customer is serious ground. Who are your customers and what are their dreams? They've got to have bigger aspirations than fewer dropped calls? Branded MVNOs are really at the fore of offering services based on how their customers see themselves. Virgin is aimed at young hipsters, and MVNOs are targeting specific market segments, such as Defense Mobile focus on serving US military veterans. These brands want to speak not only to the customer they want to woo, but how the customer wants to see and affiliate himself or herself.

In the U.S. Verizon appears to be angling for the customers looking for the top-tier service. While AT&T and T-Mobile are engaged in all-out hand to hand combat over low prices, even throwing cash at subscribers to switch carriers, Julio Puschel, Principal Analyst, Informa Telecoms & Media points out that Verizon has been noticeably quiet.

“It is interesting to keep in mind that Verizon hasn't so far reacted to T-Mobile and AT&T competition,” Puschel says. “That shows that Verizon is keeping its positioning of a premium carrier, focused more on the quality of its products rather than low prices.”