Time to Get Personal

If there is one defining trend for business in the 21st century thus far, it is personalisation.  Banks, retailers, publishers, even clothing and car manufacturers, are harnessing insights into their customers to improve products and market them more intelligently.

However, the industry where personalisation is less evolved than it should be is the one which gave us many of the enabling technologies in the first place. The communications industry, and in particular mobile providers, gather huge amounts of intelligence on their customers, but some are failing to make use of it effectively. 

According to a survey published in February, half of UK consumers polled said that they do not receive any mobile bundle offers from their providers, even though 72 per cent claimed they would like to. Not only that, but also, 61 per cent said they would spend more if mobile companies gave them the flexibility to choose the options that fit their needs. Real-time actionable intelligence can help mobile operators become more competitive and profitable, and this competitive advantage is well within their grasp.

One only has to look at any large telco’s IT systems to see why they struggle to use customer intelligence effectively. The vital data they need is often distributed across several different systems, and traditionally, the technology to aggregate it into a single source of information was unavailable. Operators’ response to this challenge was to rely on data warehouses and business intelligence, yet this approach created bottlenecks, and information quickly went out of date. Data gathered two-months ago is not helpful to product managers launching new services in today’s market - they need a real-time view of their customers. 

Actionable intelligence
Even if extracted in a timely fashion, data in itself is worthless. The ability to identify trends from the data is where it can help deliver a competitive edge, turning raw data into insight and actionable intelligence. Mobile companies need a way of extracting usable data and creating services that meet customers’ needs in real-time.

Given the ability to access and analyze data, operators could learn huge amounts about their customers, creating opportunities for up-selling and improving customer service. This information could allow service providers to set out offer policies, defining how and to whom each bundle is offered. Because offering the wrong bundles (whether through price or services) to the wrong customers is not a profitable use of existing relationships – indeed, it could alienate customers completely.

The technology required to gather the necessary information does exist, but it relies on prior analytics to determine which customers meet the criteria to trigger an offer. This can take months to set up, making it difficult for CIOs to see quick returns on their investment.

With real-time promotions, mediation and product management systems, such delays should not be necessary. An offer could be triggered by any combination of real-time data, such as current balance, top up history, stock inventory levels, creditworthiness, location, profitability, or spend levels. The offer could be in response to an inbound contact, via a web channel, an agent, or automatically pushed, via SMS or email, when trigger criteria are met.

Relevant promotions
Integrating this approach with existing systems and third-party applications, such as OSS/BSS and CRM systems would give operators the ability to deliver highly relevant promotions and customer service interactions that can yield additional revenue opportunities and cost savings – both of which are critical in a saturated market place.

Increasingly, customers view their mobile provider as their personal connectivity partner, providing a range of hi-tech, connected devices. As new connected devices enter the marketplace, people’s natural approach is to acquire them as add-ons to their mobile service, directly from their connectivity partner. This represents a huge opportunity for operators. In order to capitalise on this interest, and make money, however, they need to be able to give each customer the flexibility and personalised approach they increasingly demand.

Alastair Hanlon is product management director at Convergys