A report said, “Though adoption was initially driven by the younger generations, the use of mobile is not restricted to the young—there’s a new demographic that’s leading the charge now. Consumers age 55 and older in the United States now are among the leading adopters and drivers of many devices and services. For example, consumers in this age group have a three-year smartphone compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of nearly eight percent compared to roughly two percent for 18- to 34-year-olds.”

Isn’t that an interesting statistic? Now that we know this, Telcos can leverage this information and market to 55-year-old and above their desired plans to increase ARPU. How can telcos do this? It is imperative to have a deep understanding of each customer. In other words, intimate knowledge of customer behavior, preferences and intent become a pre-requisite.

Glenn Wilters said, “Human behavior refers to the total process by which individuals interact with their environment”

If we could understand all 264 million US smartphone users who collectively look at their phones some 12 billion times a day what they need and improve our network infrastructure accordingly, we foresee a major revenue impact for telcos. Of course,understanding every customer requires a shift in telco business philosophy from
product centric to customer centric.

The first service that telcos delivered to customers, was voice telephony and this was soon expanded into SMS, MMS, Data etc. Next came the music, videos, game applications for personal consumptions. With the IoT trending currently, and other factors included, personal consumption has broadened to smart watches, VR
headsets, fitness bands and others.

For telcos to accommodate this need, they fiercely need to bring customer as the focus. Customer centricity tends to bring together Customer Lifecycle, Customer Experience and Customer Value thereby helping the telco reach deeper into the customer and thus broaden the relationship with the customer.

How can telcos prepare for the changing world while taking advantage of the unfolding possibilities? How can they convert these exciting opportunities to revenue and profit?

Investment in systems and solutions that are built to cater to this need is the way forward. Given the huge volume of data and the complexity to identify trends and patterns in such an environment, such a solution must be based on Big Data Analytics and this is where a Customer Centricity Platform comes in, like our solution “mViva”, which can gather all information related to the transactions and behavior of customers in a central location and profile the customers on received data and also deduced insights. mViva builds an extensive profile for each customer with hundreds of dimensions per customer and this list of dimensions can be increased based on availability of data.

Increasing revenues from reaching deeper into the customer base can be achieved through a three-pronged approach:

• Up-sell
  eg: Pre-paid customer who is an data user, who normally recharges for$25, when the account balance hits $10 is sent an offer to recharge for $30 and get 2 days of internet access free and the offer is sent as soon
  as the account balance hits $12
• Cross-sell
  eg: High spending customer with a history of accepting offers is approaching a mall where there is a Starbucks outlet and is sent an offer to enjoy refreshments at Starbucks and get a 10% discount; there will be an arrangement between Starbucks and the telco wherein Starbucks pays a commission to the telco for such spend
• Increased share of wallet
  eg: Customer with high-end smartphone and high speed data connection and roaming in a different city is sent an offer to download a popular movie with a small discount, to watch in the plane on the way back home; this helps the telco to get a share of the entertainmentspend of the customer, thus increasing the share of the wallet

It is very evident that a smart, Big Data Analytics based Customer Centricity Platform is needed to achieve this. Essentially, this allows the telco to leverage the unique data that it has on each customer and apply the techniques of Precision Marketing- the right offer to the right customer at the right time through the right channel – on that data.

Our solution, mViva, helps telcos to transform their business as outlined above, through the use of a very innovative and cutting-edge technology stack.

The time has come for telcos to transform themselves or get commoditized and relegated to the status of dumb-pipe providers. This is an inflection point for the industry and the progressive minded leaders will move ahead and grasp this transformational opportunity that can propel their growth to the next stage. Customer Centricity is the new mantra!