ALCATEL LUCENT : Motivation 2014: Focusing on the device - the center point for engaging customers

At this year's Mobile World Congress, I took the opportunity to focus on spending time with customers to better understand their vision and the current challenges they face. Over four days, I met with more than fifty telecom service providers from across the globe. Overwhelmingly, their reactions were the same - they felt that the mobile device is now the critical channel for engaging customers and enhancing their experience. However, managing this mobile experience is becoming increasingly complex, resulting in exploding operational costs related to customer care and support. At the same time, customers are demanding that their telecom service providers offer a more seamless and simplified experience across their services. The challenge is to develop strategies that engage customers directly on their device, in order to increase ARPU, lower OPEX, enhance experience and build brand loyalty.  

As an entry point for offering a differentiated self-service strategy and value to the customer, there are three key areas that service providers can leverage based on their existing strengths in the network. This allows for a more integrated experience through a single self-service app strategy.

1. Let customers be in charge of service usage. Make it easier for customers to discover, purchase and manage services, bundles and add-ons. Tailor offers to subscriber usage and lifestyle. Detect when customers match a promotion's criteria and encourage impulse purchase with contextual offers.
2. Minimize customer care calls. Offer self-care right on the device with built-in workflows to solve typical problems. 75% of customers prefer self-service over calling the help-desk. Empower customers to resolve issues themselves and deflect calls from the call center. If they run into issues in the self-care process, let them seamlessly start a chat with a care agent. Use proactive care to automatically detect problems, resolve them and let the subscriber know you took care of it.
3. Protect customers from malware with network-based protection that only a service provider can offer. Managing mobile security is a growing concern for customers - especially in the fragmented mobile market where, for instance, only 2% of global Android users are running the latest software. Reduce costs related to care while enhancing the overall mobile experience.

Underpinning the above is the analytics-driven customer experience approach. By utilizing network analytics, service providers can drive the right offers with the right information, provide service quality data for customer care workflows, detect malware on devices and provide usage and performance trends for operations/planning/marketing groups. By presenting to customers a single self-service app that combines the above value propositions, the service provider becomes very well positioned to differentiate its brand as a powerful touch point that can uniquely meet customers' needs and enhance their mobile experience. This self-service app also becomes a driver for the customer to engage with the service provider more regularly - thus allowing the service provider to win back and retain customer control via the increasingly critical mobile device channel.

Just around the corner is Motivation - our flagship conference bringing together industry leaders from across the globe to share best practices and experience in relation to CEM. It is an opportunity to hear firsthand from the presenters their vision on what technologies and trends will define customer experience management (CEM) moving forward. This year we will be one of the best, showcasing 15 demos, including Analytics-Driven Customer Experience. Watch the video below from MWC 2014 for a preview of what's to come at Motivation - hope to see you in Athens!