Comptel at TM Forum Live! 2017: Showcasing Sponsored Data and Predictive Customer Journeys

Posted: May 15th, 2017 | Author: | Filed under: Events, Uncategorized | Tags: , , , | No Comments »

Follow the customer, not the competitor. That’s the way it should work.

However, many operators struggle to find the right service, marketing or monetisation strategies to engage and excite their customers. Customer-centric strategy is now more important than ever, at a time when consumers demand better levels of service, attention and instant gratification from their operators across their whole customer journey. Customers are always on the journey and operators should be able to provide a personalised and consistent customer experience.

Comptel is working to help operators solve key customer challenges to improve customer experience at every touch point of their omnichannel journey, and we’ll demonstrate the fruits of our efforts at TM Forum Live! 2017 in Nice, France, 15-18, May 2017. We are proud to once again contribute to two TM Forum Catalysts, which are proof-of-concept initiatives that bring together large and small digital and communications service providers and other ecosystem players to develop innovative solutions for common industry challenges.

Both Catalysts provide strategies that help operators meet customer demands and add new revenue opportunities through improved engagement. If you’re in Nice for the event, we encourage you to stop by the Catalyst Theatre to learn about both initiatives. Here’s a preview.

New Business Models with Mobile Sponsored Data

Championed by Orange and NTT, this Catalyst also includes Datami, CloudSense and Sigma. Building on the success of our 2016 presentation, we aim to give operators the detailed blueprint they need to turn current sponsored data trials into complete market offerings.

Customers love using their mobile data for ecommerce, stream videos and play online games, but they’re afraid to engage in such activities that eat up their data plan. By allowing a third party to pay for data access, sponsored data programs remove the financial barriers that prevent mobile users from engaging. It’s a great incentive to improve customer engagement, build loyalty and drive revenue.

The Catalyst on Sponsored Data will take place at 16:30 pm on Monday, May 15 in the Catalyst Theatre.

Maximising Engagement with Predictive Customer Journeys

Championed by Orange, Ncell and ArtofArc, Comptel creates predictive customer journeys together with Salesforce, Vlocity, Huawei, Teavaro and Comarch. It’s important for operators to engage with customers at every level and channel of the buying journey, especially those customers who engage self-service shopping. Customer journeys are inherently omnichannel by nature, thus we need better insight into the real-time customers’ digital moments to find the right context to engage.

Customers crave this type of service – our recent research survey found 55 percent want more personalised engagements from their mobile carriers. Our Catalyst will provide the blueprint for operators to reach and motivate customers with those personalised, customised offers.

The Catalyst on Predictive Customer Journeys will take place at 15:00 pm on Tuesday, May 16 in the Catalyst Theatre.

We received so much positive feedback from last year’s Catalysts, and our Sponsored Data partnership was even recognized by TM Forum as the “Most Innovative Catalyst – Commercial Applications in Communications Industry” in its 2016 Catalyst Awards. We hope to make a similarly big impact this year, and look forward to sharing our ideas with guests in Nice.

Visit TM Forum’s Catalyst Theatre to see these demonstrations in action. To arrange a meeting with Comptel at TM Forum Live! 2017, email [email protected]

Download a copy of the Comptel research report “The Power of Personal” to learn more about changing consumer attitudes toward personalised services.


Six blind men and an OSS elephant

Posted: May 10th, 2017 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | No Comments »

The concept of digital transformation can be massive… or it can stem from something much smaller.

In digital transformation, there’s a mantra of simplify then transform. That makes perfect sense, in alignment with, “The chess-board analogy,” but often overlooked.

But there’s another simplification perspective to take. Let’s take the 6 blind men and the elephant parable into consideration. Each of the six blind men gets a different perception of what they’re interacting with.

In the world of OSS, the blind men are like the 6 (or more) different departments – operations, business, IT, sales, marketing, executive, etc. Each interacts with the OSS elephant and each has a different experience with it.

The MVP (Minimum Viable Product) or sand-pit environment is one great strategy to building momentum in large organisations. Identify something small that is at the heart of the solution – a place where all parties interact and get their chance to touch the new elephant. Then build something at that central point that presents something that’s encouraging / enticing to all who interact with it.

For a start, the cloud represents an environment that isn’t “owned” by any of the business units and isn’t bound up in all the security or other checks that slow delivery down. Secondly, with an MVP ensure you’re touching simulated components inside the cloud rather than exposed components inside the business (think “the implications of a handshake“). Thirdly, make it a sand-pit – segregated from production (and potentially from each of the six blind men) then encourage interactive play.

 

By Ryan Jeffery, Telecommunications consultant, author and founder of PassionateAboutOSS.com


How to get No 1 in Google Play in three days?

Posted: April 18th, 2017 | Author: | Filed under: Compelling Cases, Uncategorized | Tags: , | Comments Off on How to get No 1 in Google Play in three days?

 

Getting an app to the top of the rankings doesn’t obviously happen over the weekend. We at Comptel FWD have been working on the Digital Sales Channel, aka FWD, solution for more than two years, building, fine tuning & improving especially the UX we have always felt is & will be the key to success.

I will not go through the whole process from the early design principles of the FWD to the fine tunings together with 2degrees, but rather focus on what made the difference for 2degrees to get their Data Clock app (powered by FWD) to number one spot literally over the weekend in New Zealand.

 

Offering

Whatever is offered, needs to add value to the consumers. In case of the Data Clock (FWD), the pricing needs to be well thought so that it makes sense for the consumers. And the range of packets offered needs to be good enough. Not necessarily from minutes to months already at the launch, but extensive enough so that users can find what they need.

Data Clock pricing was carefully though over and the immediate feedback from new users was strongly supporting this. Also the time based packets offered in Data Clock covered from minutes to up to a day, so that users were able to find proper offer for their various needs. It was extensive enough for people to get interested, install the app & register as users.

We have also seen in all our cases that a proper free welcome packet makes a huge difference. It makes the first (and most difficult) purchase transaction easy & risk free for the consumers. Thus making the subsequent purchases easier. Data Clock offered 24 hour free welcome packet, something not seen before in the NZ markets.

One of FWD’s key functionalities is dynamic pricing. Operator may create happy hours, special discounts in minutes. And make them live immediately. That is something 2degrees did already at day 1, same day as they had Data Clock market launch. Happy hours are a great way to surprise users positively, get them curious about the service and to tell about the service further to their own networks. Positive surprises lead to viral effect.

2degrees have also used the capability of the system to show their customers they care in the case of major events.  Shortly after launch NZ was hit with Cyclone Cook, 2degrees sent a poke to the base of data users “Take care out there” with a free 1 hour data packet.  The company believes as the base grows, this will be an important social marketing tool, which can also let the company help those in need in times of natural disasters e.g. earthquakes etc.

 

Visibility

Any launch needs to be supported by proper campaigns & visibility in different channels. We have seen from one case to another that driving app downloads & registrations the good old SMS is still very effective tool. But SMS campaigns need to be supported by proper materials e.g. in homepage, tutorials, FAQ etc.

That is exactly how 2degrees did it. Daily SMS campaigns, supported by a growing visibility in different media: web site, banner ads, TVC, Youtube, Facebook, POS, you name it.

 

Organization

As we are talking about a new service provided by a telco, the importance of an appropriate organization providing & delivering the service cannot be stressed too much.

Early on, the program needs an advocate who is connected well in the organisation to engender high level (C level and reports) engagement. This engagement will lead to faster results and drives a level of focus on the organisation to succeed, and to break away from traditional slow telco models that can inhibit growth.

Telco organizations have been created to provide, well, telco services. Typically the processes take their time, days, weeks, even months. With FWD the requirements for the supporting organization changes dramatically: creating a new offer or a new campaign in the solution takes only minutes. If the organization is not able to facilitate this kind of “internet speed”, the solution is not used according to its potential. Which will be immediately seen as lower service uptake.

In 2degrees case, they realized early on in the process that their current organization doesn’t properly facilitate FWD. So they created a flat virtual organization, where they have dedicated resources from relevant teams: Product, Finance, Comms, IT, Care & Sales.

This made it possible for 2degrees to utilize the new features of FWD already from the beginning. As an example, first pokes/dynamic pricing campaigns were launched at the same time with the market launch as described above.

Last but not least: there is clearly high demand and opportunity in the markets for new operator service & pricing models.

 

More about 2degrees Data Clock: https://www.2degreesmobile.co.nz/mobile/prepay/data-clock/

More about Comptel FWD:  http://comptel.com/what-we-offer/solutions/digital-sales-channel-fwd/


With My Digital Moments, Operators Can Create the Perfect Digital Customer Journey

Posted: January 31st, 2017 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , My Digital Moments | Comments Off on With My Digital Moments, Operators Can Create the Perfect Digital Customer Journey

Customer experience is the new battleground for telcos. Forrester Research found that 72 percent of companies say that improving customer experience is their top priority. As a provider, if you can engage your customer at the right time with the right personalised service, you have an opportunity to deliver value, establish loyalty and grow your business.

So, what do customers want? To start, they expect full control of their digital life, and the freedom to build their own personal ecosystem of apps and services.

That’s why Comptel launched “My Digital Moments,” a new solution that enables perfect digital customer journeys. With My Digital Moments, customers will benefit from a self-service app on their phone that, in real-time, analyses how they consume digital services. From there, the app can recommend relevant and personalised digital services that would improve their experience.

My Digital Moments opens the door to several value-driving possibilities:

  • Service offerings that are proactive, personalised, relevant and contextual
  • Increased customer engagement and communication through a direct line to the operator
  • Improved engagement by giving customers direct visibility into their plan status and special packages

From the main screen, customers are able to view real-time service usage information, including the percentage of the data they’ve used in this cycle and their data usage trend across specific apps. On top of that, the app can display the operator’s full service portfolio, including new service plans or promotional packages from the portfolio.

My Digital Moments relies on real-time usage monitoring and intelligence from FASTERMIND™ to recommend, predict and automate customer offers based on the most relevant and contextual data. For example, a customer who consumes a lot of mobile data watching Netflix but does not currently have sufficient mobile data could receive an offer for a data plan with unlimited Netflix streaming.

My Digital Moments is also supported by MONETIZER™, which offers the easy and agile configuration of data plans, plus a common platform for charging and policy design. The result puts full control in the hands of your customers, meaning they can self-select relevant, contextual plans or instantly upgrade their data speeds and allocation in the moment.

Of course, new service opportunities can crop up at any time – not just according to your campaign schedule. That’s why My Digital Moments is supported by closed-loop analysis and service recommendations, which means service usage is monitored on an ongoing and real-time basis to ensure your customers are constantly engaged and presented with easy opportunities to get the services they need.

The solution puts the power in the hands of consumers, giving them the opportunity to build their personal digital ecosystems while empowering operators to increase service consumption, reveal new revenue opportunities and nurture loyal, long-term customers.

Heading to Mobile World Congress 2017? Meet with Comptel in Barcelona to learn more about My Digital Moments and our full portfolio of customer engagement solutions. Email [email protected] to arrange a meeting.


How Agility Helps Telco Operators Shift to Nexterday

Posted: October 20th, 2015 | Author: | Filed under: Events, Uncategorized | Tags: , | Comments Off on How Agility Helps Telco Operators Shift to Nexterday

Digitalisation has opened the door to new customer experiences and fresh monetisation opportunities, while virtualised infrastructure empowers telcos to do more with less, faster than ever. However, all of these new possibilities have also created a great deal of uncertainty. From a service architecture standpoint, operators are not sure that they can innovate fast enough, nor are they certain they can meet customers’ increasingly demanding expectations. register nexterday north

It’s a matter of eliminating friction and embracing flexibility. Innovation starts with service infrastructure, which is the foundation on which we build tomorrow’s digital service businesses. To get there, operators must seek solutions and partnerships that enable agility.

This will be a major focus point of the Blueprint Alley and related discussions at Comptel’s inaugural Nexterday North, which will run from 9-10 November 2015 in Helsinki.

Perhaps nowhere are operators’ challenges more evident than within the network. For decades, they have spent fortunes on building rigid architectures that suit their service needs, but digitalisation continues to expand the variety of potential service offerings and the number of ways these services are made available to customers. Voice is no longer the dominant service offering; operators must now quickly connect consumers with the data-driven services (apps, messaging and digital content) they crave.

That means operators must constantly re-evaluate the network to ensure they can capably serve customers now and in the future. This impacts the dynamic between operators and their technology partners. Though they may possess domain expertise, do legacy partners have the forward-looking vision and innovative solutions that deliver a wider range of services? If your entire service architecture is tied up with a single vendor full stack, do you have the flexibility to react to the next big digital development?

In our Blueprint Alley at Nexterday North, we will explain to visitors that agility will be their biggest asset in adapting for the next 10 to 20 years of telco.

agility telcoOperators must design their architecture to anticipate change, as agile service delivery will help reduce the friction that prevents them from connecting their digital supply with customers’ demands. If their current system integrator or technology vendor inhibits this approach, then it’s time for operators to seek progressive partners that possess both domain expertise and vision.

Nexterday North will be a rare opportunity to hear from big thinkers from both inside and outside telecommunications about building agile businesses. You will hear examples on what leading operators have been able to accomplish by emphasising agility in their infrastructure, and learn the steps you need to take to meet increasing customer expectations for speed and service.

By embracing this vision and looking at service architecture with a more creative eye, operators will eliminate obstacles and create a clearer, more certain path to future growth in Nexterday.

Want to learn more about agile service orchestration and delivery? Register for Nexterday North to receive a 2+2 pass – two days at Nexterday North, the site of our Service Orchestration Blueprint Alley, plus two days at the massive startup conference Slush.