The New Nation - Internet Edition

Vivek Srivastava

In today's competitive communications market, service providers are battling for customers and wallet share. In response, many are moving from a network-centric to a customer-centric mindset-to improve customer satisfaction, build brand loyalty, and maximize the profitability of each customer.

In this hyper-competitive communication services market, the battle to win and retain customers has reached new levels of intensity. Customer acquisition and retention costs are overheating as consumers take advantage of the myriad offers and deals available from an ever-growing number of service providers.

In a market where price wars rage and many services are undifferentiated, service providers are turning their attention to the ways in which they serve their customers. They are seeking to differentiate themselves by adopting a customer-centric approach as they design their processes and systems, and by delivering true value for the money.

In March 2008, a report by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), titled "Conquering Convergence," explores why companies are increasing their focus on customer needs in light of proliferating Web technology, which enables customers to exert influence over companies through user-generated content, and drives the ongoing convergence of products, companies, devices, platforms and customer groups. Top line findings of the study include:

Nearly all (92 percent) of the companies surveyed said they have a strategy in place for focusing on customers, while 69 percent said they plan to become even more customer-centric.

Yet less than 15 percent rank their customer focus programs as highly successful. This is due in part to insufficient technology. One-quarter of respondents feel their company's technology is inadequate for staying abreast of customer preferences. Nearly one-third of companies are plagued with inaccurate customer data. Only 25 percent have developed methods to forecast patterns of consumer purchases, and just 26 percent said their company can produce customer analytics that enable up-selling or cross-selling at the time of interaction with a customer.

Just 38 percent of companies said they have a complete or 360-degree view of the customer that includes information on their purchase and contact history, preferences and demographics, and only one-quarter have developed predictive customer buying models.

A customer-centric approach hinges on the broader goal of improving customer satisfaction and reducing customer service costs, resulting in increased profitability and reduced customer churn for the service provider. To realise this ambition, service providers would need to:

- Gain insight at the individual-customer level

- Analyze customer buying behavior

- Make suitable recommendations and offers through multiple customer service channels

Customer data is often fragmented across multiple, disparate systems, limiting your ability to gain one complete, accurate view of the customer. Analyzing customer behavior, understanding customer preferences, and recommending relevant products and services becomes difficult, if not impossible.

Using tried-and-tested industry solutions for customer data integration, the first step toward creating a customer-centric business is consolidating disparate customer information into one complete view. The service provider can then share that information across all systems and make it available and understandable to all authorized personnel.

The key to growing average revenue per user (ARPU) and average margin per user (AMPU) is to offer the right products or service bundles to the right customers at the right time. Using tried-and-test solutions like Oracle's extensive sales, marketing, and analytics solutions, the service provider can

Analyze buying habits and behaviors of individual customers

Make relevant, real-time recommendations through multiple channels, including call centers and Web sites

Enable cross-selling and up-selling of products and services in real time

Improve your success rate over time, with self-learning diagnostic tools

Accurate billing and effective bill presentment are critical to safeguarding the service provider's revenue, as well as to promoting customer satisfaction. With solutions such as Oracle® Communications Billing and Revenue Management, the service provider can build on a proven, real-time billing and revenue management platform already deployed worldwide. A solution as such can improve customer satisfaction by ensuring accurate billing the first time. It also means fewer inquiries to the call center and improved collection rates and fewer payment defaults.

The time and effort it takes a call center to handle a customer query can affect the profitability derived from that customer. Providing excellence in customer service is essential to improving the customer experience, but it must also be efficient. With extensive and powerful customer relationship management software solutions, the service provider can expect to

Improve call center productivity with quicker, better, and more-efficient customer service

Build brand loyalty and strengthen customer relationships with every contact

Close the loop between contact center and field service.

The service provider aside, no one is more concerned about the details of its customers' accounting and billing information than the customers themselves. Using industry's leading solution for self-service account management and bill presentment like Oracle's Siebel Self-Service and eBilling, for instance, many service providers have discovered that online customer self-service account management is the most effective and efficient way to deliver higher levels of customer satisfaction and customer empowerment at a lower cost to the service provider.

Putting the Service Provider in Control

Technology solutions must deliver business value to the Communications industry through a complete solutions portfolio that offers the widest choice of business applications, decision support tools, and middleware and database offerings.

In today's fast changing Communications landscape, technological advances and consumer habits are pulling service providers in different directions. Not only do service providers need to keep up with the changing technology, they face increasing challenges in predicting and identifying the right services for customers as time-to-market is critical. Service providers need to partner with strategic technology partners to ensure that they can gain insight to customer profitability and the overall health of the business. Service providers can then radically improve time to market for new services, build stronger brands, and lower operational costs by managing, realising revenues and maximizing the revenue stream for each customer type, service offering, partner relationship, payment method, business model, or geography.

At the end of the day, service innovation is only as good as the ability to bring the service from concept realisation to cash generation, while keeping consumers satisfied and coming back for more.