The Indian telecom story is spectacular not just for the impressive
double-digit growth that it has witnessed but more importantly for the inclusive
growth that it has enjoyed. Declining service rates and rising consumer bases
have contributed immensely in making this telecom revolution reach over 543.20
mn Indians (as per Trai November 2009 estimates). With the commencement of the
much-awaited 3G auctions, there is much excitement that this revolution will now
spill into every nook and corner of the economy.
Rich content driven services on account of higher data transit speeds could
completely rewrite the norms of functioning for important lifeline sectors like
banking, education, and medicine among others. Mobile-to-mobile money transfers,
for instance, could make important banking services just a click away for many
who've never had the privilege to the most rudimentary of financial
institutional offerings. On the other hand, an 'anywhere-anytime' access to
online libraries on mobile phones could create new breakthroughs in bringing
education within the reach of aspiring students in the remotest of regions of
the country.
The Experience
A huge deluge of VAS and mostly data centric service offerings will
evidently back this plethora of new possibilities. Translating these service
offerings into benefits for the masses requires the consumer to understand each
offering to the extent of making a purchase and consequently continuing with the
product. Through all stages of the product's use, right from its purchase to
selection of a payment scheme to customer care, driving customer experience is
imperative for its successful adoption. Customer experience broadly relates to
(but is not confined to) four major areas: purchase, customer care, choice of
services backed by roll out time and billing.
Purchase
Consumer experience begins with an interface a consumer initiates with a
service provider for a purchase. This, in most emerging economies is usually
through a store visit. However, in the wake of ever increasing number of service
offerings that may range from access to news updates, to movies to banking
transactions to ERP tools to online music to astrological services to mobile
gaming, a systematic purchase process is mandatory.
Taking the entire buying process online is one of the fastest and most
effective ways of facilitating a paradigm shift in the way telephony services
are sold. Online buying has undoubtedly been in existence for a while but has
still not become the preferred mode of transaction, despite the large number of
benefits. Online stores, for example, can provide a consumer with a streamlined
view of all that is available. Telecom 2.0 tools can assist with monitoring and
understanding consumer's shopping (online store surfing experience) and thus
customizing online tools to make the entire process even quicker and hassle
free.
Further, with Internet reaching most mobile phones and electronic
transactions expected to be within the reach of over 3 bn adults as per a
Gartner report in January 2010, online stores can do away with the constraints
of time and location like never before. Finally, getting a consumer online costs
a fraction (one-third to be precise) of what it would take to get a customer at
a store thus providing huge scope for cost cutting and passing on the cost
advantage to the consumer.
Care and Support
This area has gained much attention with the coming in of the next
generation communication services, backed by phones offering a multitude of
advanced capabilities, ranging from the use of bandwidth-hungry applications
such as email to Internet and video messaging. As per industry estimates, the
total number of smartphone users is expected to touch 100 mn by 2013.
Though such devices not only extend to consumers a host of services and offer
service provides new avenues of revenue generation; they do have a major flip
side to them. These devices create a number of challenges pertaining to higher
device-related support costs and longer query call handling times, particularly
around the configuration of new applications and services. Such configuration
issues may further lead to unnecessary device returns as customers incorrectly
mistake an inability to configure the phone themselves with a fault in the
handset. These returns usually happen through walk-ins to retail and high street
stores, often the site, where the device was originally purchased. It may also
lead to the service provider's call center being swamped with configuration
queries,
which at worst will lead to customer frustration, and ultimately churn.
Another aspect of this issue is the huge hurdles it may pose in terms of
penetration to lower sections of society, where figuring out compatibility
issues may take even larger dimensions.
The need of the hour is, therefore, to computerize the entire configuration
process to the maximum possible extent. Solutions in the market should ensure
that a customer query is first dealt with a computerized interface, that
combines pre-recorded data made available with information being provided by the
consumer during the course of the call. The response time to a query is
evidently far lower as compared with what a customer care executive would take.
This also comes equipped with the ability to rectify quite a few compatibility
issues without elevating the query to level of customer care. Thus, it spares
the customer a long waiting period, immense dissatisfaction and keeps the
service provider's rising expenses at bay.
The Choice
With ever declining ARPUs, despite a growing consumer base and provision of
newer services sustaining in the market, may be extremely difficult without
raising consumption levels. Dealing with this situation requires a deep
understanding of usage patterns and network availability. This information and
network management could ensure a variety of schemes and differential ratings
for services. For instance, network available in periods beyond peak hours could
be effectively dedicated to allowing a particular industry vertical (like
education or the health sector) to provide services.
It could also simply be used to provide services to consumers at lower rates
thus allowing service benefits to reach a larger base. Over and above this, it
also ensures revenue to the service provider, which would not have been the case
if there was one uniform rate extended for all periods. Introduction of schemes
is one aspect but the rollout time involved with each of them is equally
pivotal.
The market once again offers massive technological support that ensures close
monitoring of network and usage patterns to provide relevant data for possible
new consumer schemes. It further assists with a quick rollout of service
offerings to make the gap between consumer demand and supply as miniscule as
possible.
Billing
With a variety of services being extended to a customer base across various
classes, there is a huge scope to innovate on the billing front. Billing can be
done as per the session duration or the volume of data. Delving further, one
could bill a flat rate or could charge for content, as will be the case in
bundled services. Also in case of prepaid consumer, billing mostly relates to
recharging. Using a single, real-time process flow for both prepaid and postpaid
scenarios can go a long way in enabling service providers to improve charging
performance and reducing hardware requirements for convergent charging
operations.
Despite the increasing complexity of devices, rising number of services being
extended to a maturing and growing spectrum, deriving customer experience is not
only significant but also achievable. Time and again service providers have
realized that consumer experience is crucial in achieving penetration and
sustaining in the market, especially in a competitive environment where each new
offering is extended by all others within short periods of time. In such a
scenario of similar products at similar prices, it is undisputedly consumer
experience that can make the difference.
Anshoo Gaur
The author is GM & head, Amdocs India
vadmail@cybermedia.co.in
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