Customer Relationship Management

I feel that segmentation is the key to Personalization. Customers, if effectively segmented can help the Telco's improve campaign acceptance rates. A service provider will be interested to launch a new VAS only to customers who are early adopters. All service providers have location data for customers like daily routes taken, time spent on a particular route, location whereabouts to name a few. It is here that analytics acts as a game changer. Telco's may be interested in a customer, say who travels on Abbey Road daily around 9PM - from office back to his home. His profile data, already with Telco affirms this fact and also details out that this individual is a bachelor. This customer will have a very high acceptance rate for redeeming coupon codes for Restaurants/ Cinema's received on his mobile via push messages over weekends. A Telco in US has successfully implemented location analytics for advertising and reporting purposes. Ads displayed on websites and applications on customer's wireless device are tailor made depending on customer's current location. At the backend, Telco shares high level location information of the customer with advertiser. Telco also ensures that they don't share customer details which may reveal customer identity.

Customers are growing impatient day by day. They demand instantaneous solutions to problems faced. Providing agents with tools to combat this quick resolution always helps. An issue which the customer is reporting might have been a previous pain point for another customer or could be linked to the last resolved issue. Having all these details readily available at hand, improves the response time, decreases waiting time and improves customer satisfaction levels. Billing and Charging are other prime areas which help the Telco's improve customer life time value. A customer recommended an offer in lines with needs/ usage patterns is less likely to be dissatisfied. The bills generated will be in line with what the customer expects - preferably less.

Implementing an analytics solution has its own challenges. Industry nature is such that a single individual could possess multiple connections. This means that the usage would be split across those service providers and it would be difficult to get a complete picture of customer usage. Within the organization, support from multiple stakeholders including CXO's, staff etc. is a must. Moreover, when implementing analytics solution with external parties like advertisers, Telco's should account for the privacy of the customer. In my view, a service provider must weigh out the odds for an analytics based solution. It has multiple intangible advantages associated both in form of increased customer delight and employee satisfaction.