Customer is King- Part II

The telecom industry functions quite chaotically. But can't blame it, the telco flow is quite complex. Imagine this, as a consequence of marketing, an entity approaches an operator. This entity then becomes a business opportunity. an opportunity for the operator to make a customer out of the entity. This entity may or may not become a customer, his becoming of this customer, may in fact depend on many factors as in the effectiveness of marketing (hire a zoo zoo or make ARR score your theme music), availability of service in the customer requested site, availability of good design plans and reasonable tariffs, availability of required speeds or equipment (probably a wholesale customer), etc. 

In the event of the entity deciding to go with the operator, he now becomes the operator's customer. The entity now moves forward and selects the design plan {Design plans have become so complex these days, that most of the time you either don't understand it or you find it unbelievably difficult to compare it with a design plan of a competitor- so much so that these days, simplicity in design plans themselves has become a differentiator between competitors; for that matter, even simplicity in billing plan has become a differentiator- check this Vodafone postpaid bill payable in 3 simple steps- no log-in, no registration required: https://www.billdesk.com/pgidsk/pgmerc/vodafone/VODAFONE_details.jsp Only Warning: Enter your number correctly, you don't want to pay someone else's bill :-) }.  

Coming back, for the chosen design plan, prices (access and usage) will be proposed. If he is fine with the proposal, he moves forward and signs a contract saying that he is willing to pay for the services that he will incur.. {Recollect those bunch of papers that you signed without reading when buying a new sim- which indeed is a contract}. This contract will definitely pump in new revenues. With this, the sales and marketing umbrella of the operator gets over and the project is released downstream for ordering, billing, service delivery, and provisioning. The specifics of all that will be too much telco for an average reader to comprehend {Besides, my work doesn't concern the downstream either, as of now that is}.

Now adding to that, the telco flow up till here was only about an entity who has never been a customer of the operator prior. There could be entities who are customers already but still come back to the operator for additional services or the removal of some existing services. Such entities will be treated as opportunities of a new kind, whose contracts might either pump in or pump out revenues. Though the telco flow happens well within the operator, it is the customer who controls some key triggers. This is pushing the operators into understanding the nuances of new technological solutions.

Bill Shock is one such trigger. Who hasn't met Mr. Bill Shock? Everybody has, at least at some point. According to Wikipedia, Bill shock, popularized in the telecommunications industry as a term for the negative reaction a subscriber can experience if their mobile phone bill has unexpected charges... Bill shock can happen domestically if a user grossly overuses their data applications without an appropriate data plan, or internationally by using data without understanding the roaming charges involved... With an ever-increasing number of people using smartphones (with applications remaining connected to the internet), chances are Bill Shock might become a pandemic. My data usage charges for October were Rs. 562/- to be exact and I ended up paying more than Rs. 1000/- for my mobile postpaid. Now, this could actually be a complication caused by highly complex design and pricing plans which is making it difficult for the customers to exactly know how much they are being charged for the services that they are using. It is generating bad press for the operators, sabotaging the relationships between customers and operators, and will make the customer wary of future sales approaches/ offerings from the operator. 

Solutions may exist in providing notifications in real-time about increasing billable usages... Such solutions may also enable better customer interactions and hence better sales. As in: Try using an online application from your smartphone out of your home network, you get a confirmation pop-up, asking you if you still want to go ahead using the application as data charges may increase when used outside the home network... Only if you hit 'yes', the billing starts.

In fact, this need to be notified of anything that happens in the back-end might be directly influenced by the ever-increasing number of people using Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites, quite famous for live notifications ( :-) XYZ has sent you an invite to play Farmville. crap). 

Probably a new avenue for business for technology vendors like IBM with a truckload of telecom clients. ;-)

On an ending note, “The difference between customer care and customer service is that customer care is what you do when you screw up and customer service is what you (should) do, day to day”. The goal then is to improve customer service and reduce customer care. Armed with relevant information and real-time speed, the potential to radically enhance the customer experience is here, now.