Scrapping Persona-Based Marketing with Analytics
Even changing scenarios can be addressed by segment-of-one marketing. For example, when a person travels abroad, his or her use of telecom services is very different than when at home using a local service. In fact, an iPhone user in Tanzania would use telecom services differently in France than an Android user visiting from the same country. Even the length of a trip affects service usage. Combining a subscriber’s domestic profile with roaming data enables carriers to understand an individual’s transient behaviour in a way that persona-based marketing never could.
Smart CSPs are already using their customer data to devise ways to leverage their customer relationships and build trust and loyalty at every customer touchpoint. Customer journey mapping can help CSPs to keep up with customer demand. Identifying customer expectations and bench-marking these against the customer’s actual experience can reveal where a CSP can make improvements, refine existing processes and improve customer retention.
While it does bring the whole business model into scrutiny, it helps to realign investment and technologies for greater efficiency across all areas, from the back office functions like billing to customer facing features like e-payments, and even prompting recommendations for customization or niche added-value offers. By using customer journey mapping to bundle initiatives and create tariffs that customers desire, operators can become increasingly agile, multi-industry DSPs who are claiming the greatest market opportunities and resulting market share.
It’s not surprising that digital consumers expect OTT content as part of their mobile subscription, just like they expect a reliable service and faster speeds, always at lower and lower prices. CSPs who want to thrive in this digital age need to find a way to deliver this on-demand if they are to prevent churn.
It’s possible that exploring this process could highlight gaps in a CSP’s offering, presenting the opportunity to build partnerships and form joint ventures, which can result in cross-vertical market products and additional revenue streams from non-telecom industries such as travel, logistics and healthcare, among others.
As with all change, risk is inherent. However, those CSPs who can adapt using real-time insights will learn to mitigate this risk, finding smooth transitions using “agile” techniques to implement the new technology and processes to support the digital shift, further using A/B testing to determine what works before it is rolled out in production.
The challenge now for operators is to determine how they will introduce new services of this kind to harness the business potential of enormous amounts of data coming through their systems— for example, from the Internet, social media apps, mobile, electronic payments, etc. By adopting data analytics solutions that provide telecom operators with actionable insights, organizations can monetize this data to transform their businesses through integrated processes, and give customers the experience they desire. As a result, this data can be utilized to meet direct consumer needs, deliver an enhanced user experience and generate higher ROI.
Since the telecom landscape demands critical, time-bound proactive and reactive decision-making capabilities, operators will also need to think and act on their feet across many domains in order to differentiate themselves in this hyper-competitive market. To monetize and streamline their offerings, operators must introduce quick, convergent and proactive methods for launching, monitoring, analyzing and re-launching business actions. By utilizing innovative tools for data mining and predictive analytics, text mining capabilities, forecasting and optimization capabilities, telecoms operators will be able to offer differentiated services with real-time insights across domains, and deliver impactful business actions that ensure maximum relevance for customers in real-time.
Using this approach, operators will be able to unlock real value from data analytics, transform customer perceptions of telecom services and overcome the disruptive threats in the market to secure revenues. The operator that is the first and fastest to implement these tools will have a corner on the market and pave the way for others to truly understand the customers and cater to their needs. This will become the key differentiator in operators’ survival, sustainability and growth, taking them from being just pure telecom operators, to true multi-industry players.
With very little growth expected for core mobility connectivity revenue in the coming year, it is essential that mobile operators diversify to find new revenue streams if they wish to remain relevant in a transforming ecosystem.
