Taking the initiative
The difference is that whereas conventional customer satisfaction measures were backward-looking, the integration of customer and operational data hands more of the initiative back to the telco.
No longer is the organisation just driven by what customers tell it. Location data, for instance, assists in resolution of connection problems which the analytics reveal as frequently occurring during a customer’s commute, says Mark Perrett, senior industry consultant at Teradata.
This may show that a higher-value, heavy-use customer is consistently losing signal or even failing to make any calls during a part of their daily journey to-and-from work. Equipped with this information, the operator can contact this customer and encourage them to migrate to 4G (by offering special deals) or advise them to opt for a lower tariff service if acceptable.
Equally, where a large corporate HQ is revealed to be losing signal, the telecommunications’ company’s account manager can intervene immediately by email, copied to the call centre, offering a solution or alternative connectivity.
When customers do contact call centres, as a result of the integration of business and network data, agents have immediate access to on-screen information about the value of the customer and their percentage of completed calls, matched against indications of poor cell coverage or engineering works.
This puts the call centre on the front foot, with the agent able to suggest a software download or advise on reasons for poor service, impressing the customer with, firstly their knowledge of the problem and secondly, their readiness to come up with a solution or compensation.
The information derived from integration also has much broader application, allowing telcos to plan roll-outs of network upgrades so that areas with high concentrations of higher-value customers are prioritised.
Implementation
While the volumes of data involved in integration for a telco may appear extremely challenging, an analytics platform can be implemented to deliver value very quickly – in some cases within three months following a proof-of-concept.
The integration technology is entirely scalable, coping with billions of transactions per day. Yet it requires skill and expertise in orchestration to specify the data required, obtain it so it is brought into a data warehouse, then correlate it and present it in an easily-comprehensible format.
Presenting the information and making it immediately available for customer interactions also requires a mixture of subtlety and experience. Again, however, pre-configured approaches can accelerate both the speed of implementation and the flexibility of solutions.
For example, companies can identify critical steps in customer journeys and set alerts when normal service parameters are missed. Any “early warning” of potential customer dissatisfaction can then be utilised by Marketing and Customer Service professionals to create intercession points designed to mitigate any negative impact on paying customers.
Benefits
As telcos in the US and the Asia-Pacific regions are already finding, the ability to overlay business and network data is providing an immeasurably deeper understanding of what drives customer churn and what it is that keeps customers loyal.
Many customers leave not because of price, or even one big incident or failure but because of the drip-drip of small annoyances. Telecommunications operators that have integrated their data have the tools available to remove all these irritations before the customer starts to feel he or she is poorly-served and should look elsewhere.
When churn rates remain such a focus of concern, the ability to overlay business and network data is an enormously powerful tool for retaining customers and boosting revenue.
The author of this blog is Mark Perrett, senior industry consultant at Teradata.
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