The mobile market is an increasingly competitive environment and the rise of new entrants such as OTT players is changing the rules of the game by bypassing the CSPs and striking up direct relationships with subscribers. The big data they hold provides CSPs with a means to fight back. Here, Yann Chevalier explains how they can use their data improve customer value management.
Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) need to find their stance in this new mobile ecosystem and take a strategic position if they are to compete and find new and innovative ways to engage with customers, ensure ROI and reduce churn. Big data is quickly becoming a cost of entry to remain competitive, and is undoubtedly creating a competitive advantage among players who can efficiently extract value from it. Indeed, because of heavy infrastructure investments in a weak growth economy and in a more and more competitive market; MNOs must secure growth by unlocking new sources of revenue while optimising resources.
As a result, mobile operators have identified the need to secure and increase revenue by offering highly personalised and targeted offers, in real-time, based on subscribers’ actual behaviour through customer knowledge enrichment. This highlights the importance of customer satisfaction, yet to measure this means tapping into the various customer touch points spanning diverse areas such as network operations, customer service and sales, to gain a full 360 degree picture of the customer’s experience.
The three Vs of big data
As more and more data flows within the carriers’ networks and the trend is set to maintain an upward curve with the advent of location-based services and M2M applications collecting ever greater volumes of data: the challenge is not only one of managing the Volume which is intrinsically related to the Variety of sources of data in different structures. These range from traditional CRM databases to information gleaned from the network itself – such as MSC, probes, IN, Wi-Fi, and femtocells – to customer services, marketing interactions and many more. The full extent of the challenge becomes clear, with the necessity of combining the Velocity at which the CSP needs to capture and process the information; a determining factor for competitive advantage.
Unless the data can be harnessed and become actionable then it has limited use. The question of customer privacy is also of paramount importance when it comes to providing a contextual and customer-centric service that requires the analysis of personal location information: the subscriber’s permission is mandatory. On the other hand, when subscriber location data is collected on a mass-scale for the creation of internal and external geomarketing reports for example, the opt-in might be optional.
The creation of tailored advanced services requires moving beyond the traditional one-dimensional information such as gender, age, address and type of mobile device. The process requires the incorporation of contextual information regarding preferences, tastes and interests combined with powerful geolocation data; to target or anticipate future needs and actions, based on an analysis of past activities.
This combination offers myriad possibilities for contextual offers most likely to appeal to the consumer that can be delivered consistently regardless of the touchpoint whether it is on the web, through a customer service representative, or via an MMS. However timing is everything: any delay will impact on the success of the interaction and satisfaction can soon change to dissatisfaction if an offer is timed inappropriately.
Location-based marketing and geo-location.
There has also been much discussion on the potential of location-based advertising but now the market is on the verge of really taking off. Not only has the technology come of age but the potential for locationbased marketing goes beyond pure advertising and offers mobile operators in particular, the opportunity to earn substantial new revenue streams and help them fend off the offensive from the internet giants, mobile device manufacturers and content owners for the hearts and minds of the mobile user.
The recent initiative of Weve is a classic example of this phenomenon in action. The leading UK mobile operators: Everything Everywhere, O2 and Vodafone formed a joint-venture to offer marketers a single entity that offers location-based advertising services to all their opt-in subscribers. It is the first initiative of its kind in the world, but one whose success will be closely watched as advertisers and content providers now have a single point of entry to launch cross-operator LBA campaigns.
Mobile operators are in a unique position to capitalise on the fact that they have a unique ability to capture the users’ consumption data, mobility between different cells, or changing their device altogether. Due to high penetration rates and large subscriber bases, MNOs have today the potential to provide valuable information to several verticals through GeoMarketing reports. This is an exclusive opportunity to become the core of an entire new ecosystem, by unlocking new revenue streams and relying less on declining traditional sources of revenue.
Let’s take the example of the French Tier 1 operator SFR, a customer of Intersec, which has aggregated location based data from diverse scenarios such as the dispersal pattern of spectators leaving the Stade de France after a European football match, to anticipate future public transport services. Another example is the anonymised data from motorway visitors to a region in France that’s been used by a government tourist organisation to identify the optimal places to promote visitor information. These external use cases were realized at much lower costs than traditional marketing studies, creating new sources of revenue for SFR by using resources already available in the network and by capturing in real-time factual events.
If marketing reports are not new, the possibility to capture valuable data instantly and generating margin so effectively is. Plus, these can be extrapolated to dozens of other internal usages to support decisionmaking and optimise internal resources and assets: new store opening and commercial planning based on density, real-time follow up of handset sales and smartphone penetration.
How does the CSP benefit?
By improving the targeting of information and services to better match the customer’s individual needs, by reducing costs due to increased reactivity. MNOs can also benefit from big data collection and analysis by better targeting of information and by increasing ARPU and wallet share by offering relevant, contextual, realtime offers and services at the optimal time and place for each individual subscriber.
What’s absolutely clear is that location-based services offer massive potential for new services; both commercial and non-commercial for the public, brand owners and government organisations. Through the gathering of all of this big data, MNOs can garner a treasure trove of useful information, obtained in realtime, about subscribers and as a result offer products and/or services that add value and place them in the forefront of the customers’ mind. Today we are only witnessing the beginning of a new emerging technology that has immense potential for use in a huge range of situations from M-Health, to public communications in disaster situations, to M2M transactions for the enterprise. The mobile operator sits at the heart of this new eco-system and – provided they respect the privacy of the individual and use the knowledge both wisely and ethically – they hold the key to unlocking the true potential of the data, giving vital new revenue streams and the subscriber access to exciting new benefits.
