Mobile operators’ knowledge of their customers is improving in many ways, but according to a recent report from Stratecast | Frost & Sullivan, they suffer from two major blind spots.
The first is a failure to employ social network analysis (SNA) to get closer, not just to individual customers, but also to the community of users as a whole. Second is a failure to integrate the loyalty program into the existing operator IT infrastructure: the operator’s Operations Support System (OSS)/ Business Support System (BSS). Cross-IT integration is essential to inform the loyalty program with the best available data from all sources.
“Data solutions that are not integrated, or poorly integrated, with the existing IT infrastructure, are a limiting factor on the anticipated growth of the Big Data market,” Jeff Cotrupe, Industry Director, Big Data & Analytics, Stratecast | Frost & Sullivan, said in a release. “This prevents companies from receiving maximum value from their data investments because companies are trying to base Big Data initiatives on incomplete information. They also suffer from a holdover of the old ‘IT glass walls’ concern: business users still need to ‘ask IT for help’ to derive value from the Big Data systems.”
Mobile operators today are facing a new problem which is known as the Vanishing Customer, according to the report.
If customers do stay, they use fewer mobile calling services or service units, and provide the operator with lower average revenue per unit (ARPU). Since operators are attempting to shift their revenue models to match customer usage models—providing all-you-can-eat calling and messaging but imposing metered data plans—customers are changing lanes, too, using data largely or solely via Wi-Fi, and using free videoconferencing services. Using Big Data will help to understand customers and develop their profiles. Having this, operators need to take the next step: launch a customer loyalty program.
“When operators take a look back, however, they realize they are sitting on a gold mine of customer data,” Cotrupe added. “Processing and analyzing this Big (customer) Data results in customer profiles and personalized services. This enables operators to create customer loyalty programs that maximize revenue retention and drive new revenues.”
Part of that evolution occurs when operators gamify their loyalty programs, providing incentives for a wide range of customer actions, the report suggests. Another part of the evolution is combining loyalty with mobile commerce management (MCM) techniques such that the loyalty program becomes an effective mobile touch point for both customer retention and revenue generation.