The New Business Model Will Require Operators to Communicate to People as Individuals
When was the last time you heard from your mobile service provider? Was it an upsell? Perhaps a care call?
Do you remember the last time your operator was in touch about something positive without trying to sell something? Do you ever get the feeling that they shout advertising messages at you and only personalize the experience when something goes wrong? It isn’t easy to retain and grow subscriber relevance. Most service providers are completely focused on the price and network quality aspects of the engagement. But what about communications? An effective customer engagement strategy is the central tool for almost all of the service providers digital B2C peers. For most service providers today it is still seen only as an advertising tool. What a waste of capability!
Engaging with your customers is about communicating value. Digital service providers today are differentiating their service from would be competitors by regularly explaining the value that they create for you. In doing so they let you know how well they understand you, and how well they serve you. Think about Amazon and their book recommendations, Netflix, Google, LinkedIn. All of these companies are proud of the service they provide to me and are willing to tell me about it.
From their beginnings and given their scaling model, these companies couldn’t afford to deal with all of their customers via a call centre, so they do something which has proven to be much more effective – data driven digital engagement. Why then does my service provider still thinks that they should only get in touch with me when it’s time for contract renewal?
So what is stopping the service providers – do they not understand their subscribers well enough to speak to them instead of shouting? Or do they not believe that they are creating any value worthy of communication? The data sources are available, albeit siloed. With an appropriate plan in place the right data can be organised to identify communications. The value should also be clear. Operators have spent years building functionality to allow them to create and manage tailored subscriber services – it is time to demonstrate those tailored offerings in a much more personalized way.
Now is the time for smarter engagement, put down the megaphone and send a personalized notification to tell your friends. The era of shouting out advertising messages and waiting for care calls must come to an end. Service providers need to learn how to communicate their value to their customers, or prepare themselves for the utility price fight.
