Customer Relationship Management

Bills can also generate references to the service providers from their customers. A customer can ignore any other communication from the service provider but not the bill. The power of bills can be unleashed very well with planned marketing, sales and service coordination. Is it not?
           
Especially e-billing can create wonders in this area as customers can be directed through embedded links in the e-bill to promotional pages and customers can be given loyalty points if they provide references and for their new service subscription. Hence a bill is like a newsletter from a telecom service provider to educate, spread the awareness, promote, cross sell and up sell service provider’s products and services.

Cross selling where the existing customers are to be sold with value added services for their existing services, bill is an excellent option to give a view of how the service can benefit the customer. Say, a customer predominantly has a long distance calling pattern, in the bill we can suggest to him a long distance pack by comparing his calls and mentioning the savings that he will gain out of the pack. This could be a sure cross sell win for the company and the customer will also benefit from it. It is a clear win-win situation. Many customers would like to go for the value added services and packages but they may not be aware whether the specific service is available with the service provider or not. Cross selling through bills would make them aware of the services and offerings. It will be a good thread of thoughts if you could suggest other ways you think of where a bill can be used as a cross selling weapon.

In up selling where the existing customers are to be offered new services or subscriptions, the bill is again a good option to target the right customer. A customer calling pattern can be analyzed and a cellular customer can be suggested to go for a landline giving the benefits along with his call pattern. A customer who is using GPRS to a great extent can be offered a Wi-Fi connection. A customer who is using a broadband connection can be easily directed to a landline or mobile option and giving a loyalty discount to his existing subscription. All these can be achieved with the bill as a medium and coordinated enterprise effort.

Customer profile will also be a major deciding factor in cross selling and up selling. If a customer is in a border area and facing signal interference at his residence, a landline phone can be cross sold to the customer. The other parameters could be the customer age bracket, location, calling pattern, usage, payment pattern, payment mode and so on. This kind of intelligence should be built in CRM systems and the telecom service providers will get a decent ROI for these enhancements in systems.

What are your thoughts on this, as an end user of telecom bills or as a telecom service provider’s business manager? Any comments?