In the fast-paced and constantly changing world of telecommunications, offering a great customer experience is critical. Customers need more smooth and personalized experiences, therefore telecom providers must adapt and innovate.
From 1G to 5G the generational evolutions profoundly changed the underlying networks. Our relationship with communications has changed substantially, and what consumers expect from Communication Service Providers (CSPs) has changed too. Powered by fast Internet connections, the world is spending more data each year.
CSPs need strategies to tackle and keep up the pace with innovation. The secret might be as simple as listening to the audience’s needs and catering to them. Digital Service providers (DSP) successful business model provides some powerful insights on how to do that - it's time CSPs take and implement some lessons learned. DSPs like Netflix start by focusing on the customer and consider the technology afterwards. They bring the latest advances in automation and artificial intelligence into the mix in order to understand their audience and proactively optimize the product and customer experience.
That thinking proved successful in the telco space. New players who listen to customers are conquering market share at a phenomenal pace; CSPs who stick to their guns face profit loss and are at risk of being no more than a connectivity enabler.
In this post, we look at five proven ways to improve customer experience in the telecom business.
1 Membership Scheme
A Membership scheme (also known as membership programme or loyalty scheme) works by rewarding subscribers with loyalty points or credits. To increase success and adherence, brands can offer bespoke mobile propositions, unique to the customer base. Members can collect extra rewards for using the mobile service. Points can be accrued for key service interactions, for example, activation, plan renewals and additional service purchases. However, efficient points programmes must look beyond traditional models of money spent equals points earned.
To impact customers and drive loyalty, it’s necessary to include multiple offerings targeting specific segments. Recognising and rewarding tenure is also important.
Allow members to spend loyalty points in a meaningful way that speaks to their needs, such as:
- Service rewards, such as extra data or free plan renewal month.
- Exclusive deals with sponsorship partners (film, music, sport, etc).
- Offer premium rate services, including roaming.
- Allow to redeem in-store or online.
2 Payback
Paying or “giving back” end user’s unused money, data or bundle allowances is a powerful strategy. It allows customers to have better control of their allowances. This is valued by customers – they feel they are getting paid back and that their data never goes to waste!
The payback can take multiple forms:
- As a discount on next month’s plan, also known as money back.
- As rollover – the unused data rolls over from one month to the next.
- ‘Giving back’ is enabled by implementing a discount scheme using the CCS platform’s credit control and reporting functionality. Real-time service control means end users can never exceed their service allowances, which frees revenue to provide unique offerings for unused allowances.
3 Family Plans
In a family plan or group plan, a group owner can add family or friends to enable them to receive a discount either on shared or individual bundles. Both the user who invites and the user who joins the group can receive a discount. The group owner can add more SIMs to the group and manage their allowance. The instant reward characteristic behind group plans turn it into a powerful tool to customer acquisition. The payment process and risks are minimized because the group owner has the responsibility for making all the group’s payments.
4 Loyalty Incentives & Gift Bundles
A timely gift can make all the difference. Loyalty incentives provide a recurring or one-time data or service usage gift or incentives, unique to your customer base. This strategy is very useful to:
- Incentivise service usage and engagement. For example, drive more app installs with a targeted gift tied to the app.
- Encourage specific actions, such as signing up.
- Contract subscription or renewal. Entice end users to stick with the provider when nearing the end of a 12-month contract.
- Reward on-time payers with bonus data and boost the number of end users who pay their bills on time. It’s useful for postpaid approaches and for pre-paid plan renewals.
5 Charity
Giving back takes many forms but giving back to causes that matter is another game. Corporate Social Responsibility matters. Launching a mobile phone service to a charity membership or supporter base can drive incremental and recurring funds to the nonprofit of your choice. The CSP contributes on behalf of the customer. Drive incremental and recurring revenue into your charity through mobile phone service usage and donations of un-used bundle allowance or cash balance from the end user to your charity.
A mobile phone service, with no need for end users to commit to a contract or undergo a credit check, easily and fully integrated into your charity membership or supporter base.
Add value and increase supporter loyalty by rewarding service activation, monthly renewals and purchases, which can be redeemed against the end user’s mobile phone service, or in your charity’s outlets, shops and cafes for example.
To wrap this up customer-centric strategies are designed to boost CSPs’ competitive advantage.
Inside Lifecycle Software we provide a CCS cloud solution that opens new doors for telcos. Lifecycle CCS as a Service was born to empower any communication service provider, either MNO, MNO sub-brand or MVNO. CCS equips brands with all they need to weave and deploy customer-centric strategies that generate revenue, increase engagement and drive loyalty like never before.
CCS has a Cloud native, highly dynamic micro-services architecture orchestrated by Kubernetes and uses open APIs to enable easy setup and interoperability of components.
CCS as a Service has a very high degree of automation to enable CSPs to self serve and manage the strategies that fit their needs and the audience. There's no need for IT teams or complex designing. Thanks to automation, CCS has a reduced time to market and allows business to focus on their customers and business growth.
If you want to learn in more detail the 5 ways to improve your customer experience in the telecom industry free download our eBook below.
