Technology news and Jobs arrow VIRTUALISATION arrow Communications providers must communicate more, says Ovum
Communications providers must communicate more, says Ovum E-mail
by Stuart Corner   
Thursday, 03 September 2009
It sounds like marketing 101. If you want to keep your customers, keep them happy and keep them buying; you need to keep communicating with them, but says Ovum, that is exactly what most major telecoms services provider don't do.

According to Ovum's UK based Consumer Practice leader, Michael Philpott, "Often the main points of customer contact for the broadband service provider is when the customer first signs up from the broadband service, and when something goes wrong – with only the odd e-mail flyer in-between. Operators can try and do take advantage of these main points of contact, but to be really successful, they need to be looking for innovative and eye-catching ways of opening up more consistent communication channels with their customer base."

He adds that this is something they will have to execute effectively because their hopes of boosting margin from all the services that can be delivered on a broadband connection are dwindling fast.

"Over the past two decades broadband access has provided a good revenue source and has been highly profitable for many, but service providers have never really been able to take full advantage of the other opportunities broadband access provides," he argues.

"IPTV and VoD have been a success for some, but certainly from a profitability point of view, will not be an option for all. Many of the other opportunities often highlighted, such as online music, gaming, and even technical support and content back-up have also been taken up by other players and therefore have become fiercely competitive markets."

Ovum does see signs that broadband providers are starting to get the message that they need for more consistent communications with customers. "Those few service providers that still have a successful Internet portal are starting to innovate around that as a way of entertaining, helping, communicating with and up-selling services to existing clients. Others, who do not have a very successful portal, are starting to experiment with free services, to gain the initial traction, and then looking for ways to further up-sell services on top of the initial offering."

Ovum cites the case of a tier one US player that had spectacular success with a pilot scheme (no details of which were provided). "[It] found that such a strategy increased its marketing success rate over traditional methods by 200 percent, as well as gaining: a significant increase in VAS awareness – 615 percent increase in web traffic for the music service; 55 percent increase in new security subscriptions; a 20 percent decrease in security service churn."

This article first appeared in ExchangeDaily, iTWire's daily newsletter for telecommunications professionals. Register here for your free trial.
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