Key Ways to Drive Customer Engagement in the Telecom Industry

by Buana Sari Digital Marketer

For telcos, customer engagement refers to the process of optimizing customer interactions with businesses at every possible customer touchpoint – research, pre-sales, onboarding, usage, support, and more.

The highly competitive telecom industry has become a battleground for customers. With voice and messaging services diminishing; and OTT (over-the-top) services such as Netflix, Amazon, Facebook, Skype and others continue to eat-up the telco offerings, they must prioritize their investments in new ways of customer satisfaction.

Experts say that customer experience is an area where telcos can differentiate themselves from their competitors and hold a tremendous scope for improvement. Data from a recent Ericsson Customer Survey indicates that an average mobile phone user requires 4.1 days and 2.2 attempts on average to complete an interaction with a telco brand. A day’s delay in accomplishing an action translates to a thirty percent decline in customer satisfaction. Only one third of survey respondents are of the opinion that their telcos understand their needs as a customer. In addition, forty-six percent of customers think that their telecom service provider is hiding behind a ‘bad’ technology such as do-not-reply emails.

To increase customer engagement, the telcos are required to initiate taking targeted actions embracing appropriate marketing technology. Telco brands that are actively driving customer engagement are investing heavily in new age technologies like moLotus. They are already experiencing a solid increase in new revenues streams, customer lifetime value, ARPU, and ROI.

Here are the key ways to drive customer engagement in the telecom industry in the current marketing landscape :

1. Implement Mobile Technologies for End-to-End Customer Journeys

Telco customers' journeys are no longer the same. The global pandemic has changed them completely. They now prefer mobile onboarding performed remotely. With OTT players offering one-click service subscription, mobile billing, mobile document submission instant connectivity, traditional telcos urgently need to rethink when it comes engaging customers at each milestone of the changed journey.

The customer journey points outlined above may seem too futuristic for a few telcos. But similar big telecom players have successfully penetrated the market and tapped every stage of customer journey including lead generation, customer acquisition, onboarding, education, support, retention and advocacy using powerful mobile marketing platforms like moLotus. The telcos are committed to 100% mobile video customer interactions since day one at almost zero cost of interaction, without requiring any app download or data charges. moLotus has entered into win-win partnerships with telco giants amassing million subscribers and generated high margin revenues in just three months. While mobile support interactions are fast becoming a preferred contact method for the majority of telco customers, leaving behind an array of e-care solutions earlier provided by telcos via email, app/mobile website, social media, etc.

A study from Bain & Company found out that telcos practicing a simple and mobile-based approach to advertising their products and processes, outperformed their peers in terms of customer retention and revenue growth.

2. Enhance Customer Profiling & Targeting

One of the great advantages of digital marketing tools for telcos has been that they can do customer profiling, target and reach specific prospective customer segments. They can convert vast amounts of customer data into enriched customer profiles featuring demographics, spending pattern, usage plan, etc. Customer profiling makes it convenient for telcos to invest and identify the consumers most likely to convert and thus their marketing efforts really work.

Telcos using marketing channels like Facebook, HubSpot, InMobi, etc. lacked customization opportunities with limited or no profiling, targeting and segmentation opportunities. However, the direct marketing landscape has experienced a turnaround with moLotus technology providing advanced profiling and targeting based on demography, context, language, etc.

moLouts has benefited the telcos globally. They are now able to reach directly to the inbox of customers. moLotus messages remain in the customer’s mobile inbox as long as the customers wish to keep them adding to customer engagement.

3. Personalize Customer Communication

Over years telcos have been facing the issue of disengaged customers and high churn rate. According to research by Knexus & Gemius Global, for every customer loss, telcos end up paying twice – once by losing the future revenue of the customer, and then in the investment to acquire a new customer.

Dynamic telcos have found a solution to this issue. They have begun to use customer data to send hyper-personalized recommendations, offers and messages based on segmentation, increasing conversion, sales and loyalty. This one-on-one personalization varies from the traditional marketing channels.

Personalization has gone beyond offers and messages to include content, interactions, needs and behaviors of individual customers rather than only segments. Telecom operators must not invest their valuable resources in mastering the age-old personalization techniques. In fact, they should embrace disruptive marketing tools like moLotus to send highly individualized, automated and interactive content to their customers for better engagement.

4. Incorporate Big Data and Predictive Analytics

Telco brands are in an interesting position. They are in possession of a massive customer database siloed in their systems. However, most telecom players struggle to operationalize and transform this data into meaningful insights.

According to an IDG survey, only twenty percent of telcos have been able to deploy data analytics successfully, while another seventy percent are of the view that big telco data is going to play a big role in the future of telecom business. Most of the telco failure in data monetization is due to lack of right analytics tools.

Big data analytics in the telecommunication industry is at a nascent stage across the globe. However, the innovators showcase that investments in analytics tools like moLotus result in significant payoffs, especially in terms of customer engagement and profitability.

The breakthrough technology has come up in a big way with Big data Analytics helping telco partners in managing and monetizing their massive database. Telecom brands are capable of micro-targeting based on business criteria, buyer intent, demographics, interaction, etc. to generate deep customer insights which further assist them to deliver customized and personalized content to the customers, finally enhancing customer engagement.

5. Interact Better with Customers

In the current competitive telco business environment, the next frontier for superior customer engagement is easy, quick and contextual brand-customer interaction. Telecom customers expect telcos to offer much more value than just providing reliable, competitively priced, and attractive products and services. They expect their telecom operators to be responsive, empathetic, flexible, and finally more aware of their requirements.

Research reveals that Gen Z and Millennials prefer easy interaction with their mobile operators across a suitable mobile platform at their convenient time. Matching these expectations, whereby product innovation and customer interaction become key strategic differentiators is both a challenge as well as an opportunity for telcos.

Tech-savvy customers are moving toward telcos that have automated and transformed customer interaction using new mobile technologies like moLotus. This technology has come up with many easy customer response options. Customers can now easily connect with telcos via mobile using SMS, Web Link, USSD, Call Back, Clicks, etc. moLotus customer interactions transform telco-customer communication to be real-time, mobile, seamless, available, simple and engaging.

6. Transform Customer Processes

Digital transformation has offered a vivid range of benefits to telcos helping them to engage more customers and that too in a better way. Telecom players all over the world are using technologies like moLotus to automate and digitally transform their customer processes to meet customer engagement and revenue goals.

Marketing automation tools like Marketo, moLotus, Hubspot, etc. are automating the customer process making them much quicker, hassle-free and convenient. With its superior automation capabilities, moLotus platform and tech is being used to seamlessly automate the telco customer processes including onboarding, reminders, thank you communication and many more with cost reductions, revenue enhancement and better customer engagement.

The moLotus mobile technology has gone ahead in revolutionizing the loyalty card segment by replacing plastic-based loyalty cards with mobile loyalty cards. Telcos are developing long-term relationships with the millennials by keeping them engaged via moLotus transformation capabilities like digital rewards, Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), real-time customer ratings, mobile reminders, how-to, feedback via mobile and more. Research highlights that moLotus has reduced telco outbound process costs by up to thirty percent, improving customer satisfaction.

7. Enhance Customer’s Product Discovery and Purchase

Telecom brands are strong multi-product service providers, and to engage more customers they should keep on adding new products to their product mix. Launching new products requires effective brand awareness, lead generation and sales conversion campaigns.

An innovative awareness campaign plays an important role in a telco market with new products delighting and engaging customers. Telocs must showcase their newly launched products in front of occupied, distracted customers using mobile advertising platforms including moLotus, InMobi, AdColony, etc. which help them to showcase products bringing more brand visibility and engagement. For instance, moLotus product demo campaigns easily attract customers, increasing engagement and conversions.

For many telcos, lead generation has been quite challenging. They used to be ineffective as customers perceived them to be disturbing and spammy. Moreover, leads happened to be not qualified or engaged, interested leads. Hence telecom sales teams couldn’t convert the dead leads

Lead generation has become performance and engagement oriented with more and more telcos embracing moLotus mobile lead generation platform. They are not just getting more leads but also engaging and converting them into sales via moLotus lead generation campaigns. The campaigns extensively use illustrative telco product HQ videos up-to 40 sec. attracting the potential customers; engaging them and entering into transactions instantly.

8. Reward & Retain Loyal Customers

The telecom industry has become a battlefield for engaging and retaining existing customers. The entry of new telecom networks has made it more competitive. The ever-changing customer preferences has shifted the focus of telco marketers towards adopting technology for building customer loyalty and engagement. Operators are launching new loyalty & rewards campaigns to boost customer loyalty and customer engagement.

Mobile loyalty campaigns are being delivered via mobile apps like Spendgo, Shopkick, Smile.io, etc. However telecom brands using them have been mostly unhappy.

Researchers say that mobile loyalty campaigns delivered via moLotus are engaging more customers by delivering personalized messages to customers for events like birthdays, anniversaries, festivals, etc. and that are custom-branded with options for name, greeting, etc. call-to-action (CTA) for individual customers. The telecoms are sending multiple reward-based coupons directly to customer’s mobile inboxes. These loyalty & rewards campaigns have boosted customer loyalty adding to the conversions and engagement.

Conclusion

The telecom industry is finding it difficult to engage customers presented by regulatory, technological, and competitive environments. One of the biggest trends shaping telco customer engagement is the adoption of new technology like moLotus; bringing not only more customers but also engaging and retaining them finally resulting in higher lifetime value, ARPU and profits.