We’re Exhibiting at Policy Control and Data Pricing 2014

Comptel is excited to share that we’ll be exhibiting at the upcoming Policy Control and Data Pricing 2014 conference, taking place 8-9 April at the Radisson Blu hotel in Berlin.

This is the fourth year of the conference, which has become a key event for the global telco industry.

As policy continues to evolve into a multi-faceted tool for traffic management, revenue generation and much more, it’s becoming increasingly important to build a network that can handle the rapid growth of user data.

We’ll be there to meet with our customers and others interested in learning about our analytics-enhanced Comptel Policy and Charging Control offering. Our unique approach natively integrates policy control and charging in a modern, offer-driven service creation environment, Charging Policy Offer Design (CPOD), allowing for the fast introduction of new services. This ultimately helps communications service providers become more responsive to customer needs, which is critical in an increasingly mobile and context-driven world.

If you’re attending the conference, and would like to find out why we think policy control needs a ‘SPARK’ today, please come stop by our booth!

[NEW RESEARCH] What Telco CMOs and CIOs/CTOs Are Thinking About in 2014

At Mobile World Congress 2014, one theme was prominent above all others: disruption. New kinds of mobile devices, social media, Big Data, virtualisation, the Internet of Things (IoT) and Over-the-Top (OTT) providers were central to nearly every product, service or discussion.

By now, it’s obvious to telcos that business models need to change and new strategies have to be implemented, but it’s difficult to know where to begin. That’s why Comptel conducted research with Vanson Bourne: to identify the barriers, strategies and attitudes facing telco CMOs and CIOs/CTOs as they look into 2014 and beyond.

Customer Experience: The Top Priority

Our research found that telco executives almost unanimously (80 percent) agreed that customer experience should be a goal of every employee in the organisation. While that goal may be established, executives are planning a number of different ways to get there. When asked about strategic priorities for 2014:

• 60 percent are hoping to understand gaps in the service delivery process
• 56 percent want to improve network performance
• 52 percent are focused on developing new products
• 48 percent want to understand customer experience on a granular level

The Big Data Behind Big Decisions

The intelligent use of data seems to be integral to telcos’ strategies this year. Predictive analytics, OSS/BSS consolidation and other initiatives can help streamline processes and modernise infrastructure; our research showed that executives are working hard to see these through.

While we found that integration, coordination and analytics are on the horizon, there still needs to be a fundamental shift in the way that different departments communicate – while 72 percent of CMOs want to understand gaps in service delivery, 68 percent of CIOs/CTOs said that they want to improve their networks.

These are the focuses we would traditionally expect from these organisations. Until executives agree on the mutual importance of each other’s responsibility, customer-centric initiatives are likely to remain at a standstill.

So how are communications service providers planning to overcome those barriers? And what will be possible if customer-relevant insights are shared between two traditionally separate organisations?

Check out our infographic, and download our eBook below to find out more!

In this eBook, we share exclusive, global executive research that highlights:

– Executive strategies for 2014

– Barriers to integration

– Technology priorities

– Attitudes toward data & planning

Download

Millions of Customers Will Reach Their Data Cap Every Month. Have You Considered Their Customer Experience?

By Fredrik Jungermann, Founder and Managing Director, tefficient

During the last two years, mobile operators in mature markets have been able to shift from monetisation based on the number of minutes and SMSs (where demand at best is stable) to monetisation based solely on the data volume (where demand is growing exponentially).

But this has changed the customer experience. Because of the growth in data usage, more and more customers face the situation in which they run out of data before the end of the month. Some telcos – for example, in the USA, Canada, Australia and Norway – have decided to offer service packages that charge overage fees, so the price of that extra megabyte can suddenly be 100 times higher. This is a problem, because it’s the high value, high usage customers who are penalised most.

In most countries, telcos are blocking access or throttling speed, instead of charging overage fees. Blocking access when a cap is reached is possibly leading to higher upsell probability, but there’s a good chance that this strategy can result in a poor customer experience, too.  To be totally cut off can lead to irritation and a decision to “wait out the month” while relying solely on Wi-Fi. The customer may even want to top up, but is choosing to wait until he/she is in a better location or has access to a PC.

To balance customer experience with upsell probability, throttling represents a more subtle way to indicate that a customer has used up the quota and should consider a top-up or upgrade. But the real differentiator is how an operator notifies customers about their options.

Simplicity Key to Upsell Effectiveness

The way a communications service provider notifies a customer about service packages is integral to his/her experience. Many mobile operators choose to send customers an SMS when the data cap is about to be reached. This SMS should inform the customer what he/she can do to remedy the situation, too. Surprisingly, not all operators have the functionality that allows customers to simply reply to that SMS to top up. Some operators instead instruct the customer to click on a web link or log in via a self-serve tool. If the customer is in transit, this might not be feasible.

A link or next-step includes a number of other hurdles, too. Maybe the customer feels that the screen of the smartphone is too small to display web content. Maybe he or she is wary when it comes to clicking links in general or forgets the necessary log-in credentials. An offer that requires a few more steps guarantees there will be no immediate upsell – and any sales person knows that the propensity to buy declines quickly with time and additional processes.

Very few operators report on their data upsell effectiveness. There’s one exception: Tele2, a Swedish operator, reported that 58 percent of their customers who reached their cap during Q3 bought more data. This is world-class upsell effectiveness. Is it because Tele2 has designed the most beautiful web interface for upgrading and top up? No, it’s because the business created a super-simple customer experience: Reply to the notification SMS with “200” if you want to buy an additional 200 MB of data, with “500” for 500 MB, with “1” for 1 GB and with “3” for 3 GB. In addition, Tele2 supports all other upgrade and upsell channels: web (log-in self-serve but also non-log-in form), app and call-in.

Tele2 has other strengths: The 200 MB top-up increment is much smaller than some competitors, starting at 1 GB. The likelihood of a customer buying 1 GB of data – the average monthly smartphone consumption in Sweden – at the last day of the month is very low; make the increment small, and you overcome this issue.

Another factor behind the figure is that the top-up service package is designed to be lower than the base service packages. High usage customers are thereby incentivised – not penalised. A third factor is that the price per MB falls with the size of the increment. Other operators charge as much per gigabyte regardless of if you buy one or ten.

Tele2 shows that to deliver a great customer experience when it comes to cap notification and data upsell, operators should make it transparent and easy to buy regardless of location, context and wallet. Operators will then maximize the upsell propensity and reap the additional revenue benefits.

Personalised Service, Great Experience

Customer experience is going to become the defining differentiator for operators as services get commoditised and markets get crowded. This all starts with creating special kinds of service offerings for different audiences. Businesses that prove to be agile and responsive to customer needs when a new service package is needed will reap the rewards of enhanced personalisation. While the shift from SMS and voice revenues to data is ending, the shift to how to best price data to meet customer needs is just beginning.

Comptel will host its Focus Group 2014 meeting 25–26 March at the Långvik Congress Wellness Hotel, just outside of Helsinki, Finland. Fredrik will moderate one of the event’s panel discussions, “How to Best Launch – and Profitably Increase Adoption of – 4G LTE and Fiber.”

In this eBook, we share exclusive, global executive research that highlights:

– Executive strategies for 2014

– Barriers to integration

– Technology priorities

– Attitudes toward data & planning

Download

What Exactly Happened at Mobile World Congress Last Week?

Mobile World Congress 2014 broke all the records of the previous year. With more than 85,000 visitors and 1,800 exhibiting companies in Barcelona, the event saw quite a bit of fanfare. Comptel was at MWC all week and we enjoyed being right in the middle of the action.

From Big Data to smartphones, connected cars to connected refrigerators, Mobile World Congress 2014 showed us a glimpse of what we can expect this year… and next year and the year after that. As a final recap, we decided to comb Twitter and see what topics had caused the most excitement.

In this eBook, we share exclusive, global executive research that highlights:

– Executive strategies for 2014

– Barriers to integration

– Technology priorities

– Attitudes toward data & planning

Download