Telco customer management - a two-way street

by Amol Kurkarni, Product Manager


There is a classical paradox in the services industry about the perceived front-runners of the customer centricity bandwagon. Have you, as a customer of a Communication Service Provider (CSP), ever noticed the promises of putting you at the center of their business strategy? Did these promises even last as long as it took you to queue on the phone before hearing a human voice on the other side or find a relevant menu item on the web portal? Unfortunately many CSPs continue to treat their customer relationships in a product-centric way.

Doomsday prophecies have long been voiced for the traditional communication services business. Often, being termed as dumb data carriers/pipes, CSPs are blamed for not recognizing the value of the influence, reach and information they carry. Popular communication services now turn into commodities at a faster rate than the race for distinction the CSPs are engaged in. The eternal search for that Killer App has rather made this battle for relevance worse. The collaborative world of googles, facebooks and skypes that CSPs thought would bring them distinction is now considered a reason for their potential defeat.

Long gone are the monopolistic times when CSPs dictated the terms to hapless customers who had to choose between staying connected or facing obsolescence. Maybe their focus was more on thriving on newer technological advances. Nonetheless and for all good reasons, customers today are spoilt for choice in selecting the CSP to satisfy their insatiable needs for communication, richer content and newer and cooler applications. With services spectrum based on similar technologies and pricing wars turning destructive, the customers’ convenience has never mattered more.

The unidirectional nature of driving customer relationships, the all-encompassing CRM programs by the CSPs seem to have run the full circle. It might take just one viral tweet to make or break a new service campaign that you, as CSP, are betting your future on. The empowered customers of this changed era have shown a keen eagerness to exercise their right for driving value through social relationships. With the advent of everything social the other party, the customer, of these relationships is forcing the CSPs to walk the talk.

Historically, CSPs never lacked in terms of initiatives to leverage customer relationships as an asset. The message, though, may have been lost in translation when the relevant strategies were being executed through monolithic CRM IT programs. In a way, the change in customer intentions may actually have brought the obvious to the surface. With market penetration reaching its zenith, the customer acquisition rates have been saturating and retention initiatives are facing challenges on multiple fronts. It is not for nothing that the differentiated and enhanced customer experience is being pegged as the panacea for the CSPs’ woes.

The sustainable killer app may be just that, the customer experience. Whether you run a wireless service business or a fixed line one, run it on 3G or optical broadband, target at B2B or B2C customer segments, it is the biggest common denominator of the two-way relationship street between the provider and the consumer. We recognize that it is powered through enhanced customer lifecycle management.

In the coming months we are bringing in for discussion some of the most critical topics around customer lifecycle management. The theme is to search for a clear win-win alignment of the aspirations of CSPs toward their own customers.