Data Analytics: Personalizing the consumer experience

The mobile device has transformed itself from serving rudimentary roles like SMS, alarm clock to complicated services like mbanking, mhealth, meducation etc. that it performs today. In light of this change, mobile has become a cornerstone of the global economy leading to new dimensions for business.

The telecommunications industry is in a time of intense transformation. Telecom operators are now required to undertake innovative measures in the face of challenging market conditions and revenue declines. This is primarily owing to high subscriber churn rates and increasing competition from Over-The-Top (OTT) services. As the competition intensifies, consumers have become more empowered and more informed. To retain this new generation of customers, operators must roll out services beyond traditional offerings and deliver an engaging customer experience. It is essential to differentiate their services with respect to customer focus, personalization and delivering tailored offers. Run of the mill plans and packages along with mass marketing are considered obsolete in today’s age.

The rules of marketing have changed, wherein innovation simply isn’t enough. Industry trends suggest that there is a growing demand for next-generation analytics in India. To drive revenues, companies need to understand their customers and establish long-term relationships with them, which incorporate their needs and expectations. And the only way to go about it is customer experience management (CXM) - so that the customer knows that there is a new offering or a service that suits the personal needs. From a technology perspective, CXM and technologies are two sides of the same coin. CXM may not be a technology, but technology is what makes or breaks it. Analytics is the logical analysis of data that corresponds customers and customer behaviour. To increase customer satisfaction, operators should pay attention to customer intent management rather than life-cycle management.

Telecos are increasingly focusing on analytics to unify data from traditional and big data to derive valuable insights. It is imperative for the customer to be the centre of all interactions to provide the right services at the right time. The need of the hour is to deliver personalized services that require the ability to gain insight into vast amounts of data in real time. By deploying data analytics, operators will be able to analyse the vast repertoire of data to create personalised offers, reduce customer churn, visible increase in ARPU and revenue enhancement opportunities.

Recent reports by Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), and IMRB International, expects the number of mobile internet users in India to reach 213 million by June 2015. The Indian telecom market has been growing at a CAGR of approximately 30% since 1995. This growth is fuelled by an enhanced application and network performance of mobile broadband services. This acts as a catalyst for business-model innovation, driving change in the way services are delivered as well as revenues generated.

Consumers in India are thus set to see an upsurge in data services backed by a substantial investment growth in 3G / 4G networks and a significant increase in mobile phone and internet user base. A leading industry analyst firm’s Digital Universe analysis of the growth of data projects that intelligent connected devices will increase the amount of “useful data” that can be analyzed and used to make decisions from 22 per cent in 2013 to 35 per cent in 2020.

To maintain a competitive edge, operators need to recognize the right tools to handle various technical hurdles around scalability and complexity of the data. This is where the analytics solutions play a pivotal role to decode and analyze deluge of data. The use of high precision real-time analysis enables- customer data segmentation at granular levels for better targeting and improves responsiveness to customer demands.

Operators are beginning to be cognizant of the fact that business value is not in data, but in the results emerging from such data. As the deployment of data analytics do not offer straightforward answers to business questions, implementation of analytics solutions will provide strong differentiators for players in the telecom industry. This goes beyond business intelligence technologies- not just to personalize customer experience, but also ‘Intent Management’ leading to an increase in sales, reduce fraud and improve risk management.

-Amit Sanyal, AVP & Joint Head, Consumer Value Solutions, Mahindra Comviva.