Customer Loyalty: The Key To Reduce Churn For Telecom Operators

Online, February 21, 2010 (Newswire.com) - Author: Sampath Paranavitane, General Manager - hSenid Mobile Solutions(Pvt) Limited.

hSenid Mobiles offers a comprehensive product portfolio that includes a Service Delivery Platform enabling Telco 2.0, end-to-end Customer Churn Management and Retention Solution, an e-topup/recharge solution, Location Based Solution, mobile commerce solutions and a range of Value Added Services.

The time has come for telecom operators to seriously think about retention and customer relation strategies. Globally, every telecom operator fights for a larger subscriber base. In certain markets, this effort has become unsuccessful due to the limited subscriber base or the maturity of the subscriber base. In parallel, operators are on a quest looking for new services and offerings to differentiate themselves from the competitors. The trend is to add more data to already existing channels hoping to increase customer value and subscription lifetime.

Though the external content and application providers are working relentlessly to find the next ground breaking killer application or content, the results are not imminent. To add to this, every operator starts offering the similar services one way or the other, sooner or later. The competition is endless. Unfortunately, none of this has enabled the operators to manage churn at an acceptable level.

The key during such a period is to fulfill the customer demands and identify the current needs whilst focusing on trends and patterns for future needs.

Not a single loyalty card or program will hold the information necessary to determine customer needs and patterns than the mobile phone. The operators have the exact tool they need, where they can extract all this information from usage data. All operators have very accurate customer contact information and demographic information such as address etc. Yet again, the address is only applicable in the case of post-paid. What happens to the wide base of pre-paid users, especially in the maturing markets?

The operators do have all the data necessary to derive information such as customer preferences and lifestyle, usability patterns and other dynamic demographical information. Operators marketing strategy should align with making intelligent decisions to reduce churn and increase AMPU based on actual data. The marketing campaigns designed should be built based on this actual data. Operators have to identify the unique differences between segments such as Enterprise, Domestic, youth etc.

It is undoubtedly the era of the digital youth. They drive in a change that impacts the mobile market significantly. The younger subscriber base interaction is and will be based mostly on content such as entertainment, movies, games, ringtones, wallpapers etc, thus fitting mostly to the Web 2.0 model. The danger and the challenge this poses is confusing the customer by pushing more and more services without a target or goal.

The inevitable fact is that the right services needs to be pushed to the right people at the right time. This requires that the operators focus on a comprehensive churn and campaign management solution that will increase customer loyalty thus reducing churn.