Attracting Customers in a World with More Mobile Phones than People

in the form of mobile commerce. In parts of rural South Africa, where there are hardly any paved roads, small shop owners  are able to do so much more with phones saving time and money.

Technology can enable not only a better customer experience, but also better Big Data management and predictive analytics to  increase brand loyalty. By understanding customer data, providing faster information, and creating a simpler and more  enjoyable service, mobile providers are able to keep their customers empowered and informed. The mobile industry has been  challenged by mountains of unstructured data that results in slow response to customer needs which makes it difficult to  realize true customer insight. This often leads to a poor customer experience but now this is changing. For instance,  T-Mobile has used the latest technology, including our SAP HANA in-memory platform,to create a new customer engagement model  targeting the latest customer needs. Just recently T-Mobile reported its ‘best ever’ quarter with 2.4 million new customers.  

Introducing a new sales model with new installment plans, the elimination of early termination fees, and pay-offs to its  competitors’ customers for  switching networkshas proved that there are new ways to improve customer experience. In the end  of 2013, AT&T followed this same approach and created their own version of the new model by offering unlimited services and  more usage sharing capabilities for new customers.

To stabilize their market position,many operators in developed countries have also been keen to introduce innovative services to retain high-income customers whose data usage is higher than  average. Near 100 percent broadband coverage has allowed  television channels to offer live programming through their  mobile apps, which answers the demand of the dynamic style of  living in today’s fast-paced environment—to always be informed no matter where you are.

Targeting customer needs has built a path to success in the competitive mobile market. Moreover, to be the leader in the  market many mobile providers use the customer interaction and history data captured across channels in order to build an  intelligent data base that would provide targeted offers and responses based on previous customer behavior.

Mobile operators are increasingly targeting the younger generation, as they constitute the most demanding segment of global  mobile users. Since most millennials in the U.S. watch less  TV than their parents, services like HBO GO, Netflix and Hulu  have seen a spike in subscriptions. The younger generation doesn’t want to waste time sitting on the couch in front of the  TV– they want to watch it on mobile phones and tablets on the go.

As developed markets try to keep their customers interested, emerging economies are rapidly driving growth.  Last year, the  North American market grew less than one percent, while Latin America grew over five percent. Though the drive may be  different, I expect we will see a continued laser focus on customer centricity in both developing markets, where the industry growth is still occurring, and mature markets, where it’s a zero sum game and net new subscribers have to be cajoled away from the competition, over the coming months and years. In my opinion, the only way to effectively engage more with  subscribers is by leveraging the vast amounts of data available to service providers in order to understand customers and  their preferences and by building a next generation marketing and technology platform that enables real-time actions on those insights.

For the service providers that really grasp and implement the next levels of true customer engagement the rewards will be  enormous as it puts them in the pole position for the consumer oriented technology advancements that we will see over the  next five to ten years.