“The secret to business is to know something nobody else knows.” Aristotle Onassis, global shipping magnate and better known as the late Jackie Kennedy’s second husband, once uttered these famous words. Having the foresight to pursue an opportunity before others can recognize it may very well lead to wild success in business. Knowing how to source and turn information into an opportunity right under your nose is arguably just as powerful.
Well into the digital age, data or intelligence can be on the playing field with some of the most sought after of assets. Its value cannot not be overstated, especially in the telecommunications industry, where – analogous to oil powering an economy – data fuels the growth of a telecoms business. And this vast reservoir of data lies right in the devices that mobile operators provide to their customers. The challenge is realizing, accessing and harnessing it. Mobile operators who can unlock the full potential of this data and convert it into business insights will discover unparalleled value, gaining a decisive advantage over competitors – driving better customer experience, cost savings and revenue generation.
Operators are jockeying for dollars and customers
Mobile operators are neck and neck, competing for the consumer’s dollars and loyalty. As it stands, churn rates within the telecoms industry sit at around one percent, but have increased by seven percent between Q2 2023 and Q3 2024 across large tier-1 carriers in the U.S. The competition is fierce, and communications service providers offering mobile devices have experienced fluctuating revenue, with anticipated revenue growth for 2024 lower than that of 2022.
In this competitive landscape, customer experience ultimately makes or breaks retention. Reducing churn leads directly to improved customer lifetime value (CLV), and successful mobile operators will find ways to foster long-term loyalty. However, this comes with challenges at key points in the mobile device lifecycle. At various touchpoints, Net Promoter Scores (NPS) show a marked tendency to decline, signaling customer dissatisfaction.
For instance, data shows device activations typically lead to a 16-point NPS decline; phone care incidents bring about a 19-point NPS drop and repairs can result in up to a 60-point NPS drop. Even something as simple as a device issue remaining unresolved leads to a 36-point drop in NPS and churn. As high as 46 percent of U.S. customers reported that frustrations with disjointed, confusing device care experiences could lead them to switch mobile operators.
Typically, these aforementioned negative experiences occur because of friction in the user journey – from delays in care resolution to repetition of steps to inconsistent offers between channels. These negative experiences sow distrust in the operator and further exacerbate challenges to the operator’s ability to address business objectives.
The key to reversing these trends lies in directly addressing customer friction throughout the device lifecycle. Rather than operating on manual, subjective and disjointed customer-facing processes that create more uncertainty, operators need to approach customer experience differently.
What is a digital-first approach and how does it transform the mobile operator-customer relationship?
In order to reduce friction and improve customer experience, operators must take a digitized or digital-first approach to managing mobile device lifecycles and corresponding customer service, which is underpinned by four core principles:
- Remote intelligence, whereby a customer or frontline representative can address an issue or manage a journey remotely, preventing a delayed resolution or an undesirable outcome.
- Channel consistency, whereby support levels and services are standardized across channels – from retail to call center to the mobile operator’s on-device app – preventing customer confusion.
- Device history awareness, whereby the mobile operator can acquire a full timeline view of the customer’s device lifecycle and better manage customers at each stage of a journey, avoiding repetition of steps that frustrate customers.
- Personalizing customer experiences, whereby a mobile operator can proactively engage the customer at different points in the device lifecycle before negative experiences may occur, increasing customer satisfaction.
We can refer back to the data and example around device care as a mechanism to better understand the value of a digital-first approach and how it enhances operational efficiency improves a customer’s experience,
In a common device care scenario, a customer may immediately escalate the matter to a call to a support call center or refer to the nearest retail outlet to assist them. By offering a digital- or app-first approach, customers can try to resolve the problem on their own via the operator’s self-help app. In the event of an escalation to a call support center, a customer who has already run through several troubleshooting steps on the mobile operator’s app does not need to repeat them. A digital-first approach would enable the support representative to have automatic access to the troubleshooting event data. This prevents repeated device care steps and call support confusion.
If during this device care troubleshoot process, the customer’s profile indicates they are eligible for a promotional offer – such as an upgrade – the operator can trigger it and lock in the offer whereby it is available across different service channels. This ensures a consistent experience. Here, we can see how a device care incident can be streamlined into a smoother customer experience and perhaps even a retention or upsell opportunity with a digital-first approach.
Not only does this benefit operators, but customers prefer a digital-first approach, too. Seventy-three and 66 percent of U.S. and UK customers, respectively, indicated they’d switch operators for this approach and 76 and 67 percent of U.S. and UK customers indicated they’d stay loyal to their current operator for it.
What’s required to drive this digital-first approach to customer service is “device intelligence.”
What is device intelligence and where is it sourced from?
Device intelligence is a multi-layered composition of mobile device data points acquired throughout the customer lifecycle, across different user journeys, and can be gathered from different sources.
Information like manufacturer and configuration data is foundational, but mobile operator apps – specifically diagnostic evaluation tools – serve as essential hubs to source real-time feedback on device performance, often from device health checks. These data points can be collated and combined with other non-device, on-file customer data to create custom user journeys with experience-enhancing and business-positive outcomes.
Moreover, most of these device intelligence data points are not stagnant. They become cumulative over the device lifecycle – from onboarding to device care to upgrade.Throughout its life, intelligence, such as device performance, is collected and provides periodic updates on the device’s status, enriching the operator’s ability to better personalize and determine the next best course of action for their customers at any stage of the device lifecycle.
Let’s look at device care once again as a use case to better understand this. A customer troubleshooting their device runs a health check on the operator app, where diagnostic intelligence is collected. After multiple health checks over the years, an operator has a clear view of the progression of the device and its performance. As the customer nears closer to completion of their postpaid contract, for example, deep device intelligence can help a mobile operator identify the right moment to convert a device care troubleshoot event into a retention opportunity – such as a trade-in offer.
If we extrapolate our unique device care example to other kinds of customer journeys (i.e. insurance enrollment, warranty exchange, special reduced plan price offer, etc.) device intelligence can drive far-reaching, business-positive implications for a mobile operator enterprise.
The bottom line: financial impact of a digital-first approach with greater device intelligence
Harnessing device intelligence within a digital-first framework has numerous opportunities to impact the operator’s bottom line. Let’s examine cost savings and revenue generation opportunities. Here we expand beyond the device care example to express how device intelligence impacts the bottom line.
Cost savings
Mobile operators can reduce risk and incur cost savings by collecting and taking more control of device intelligence earlier in device customer journeys and connecting device intelligence across customer touchpoints channels. Warranty deflection and call center operations are powerful examples of how a digital-first approach powered by device intelligence can improve cost effectiveness.
In cases of warranty deflection, the key is to shift device intelligence acquisition upstream, putting it into the hands of the mobile operator frontline representatives rather than the device bypassing them with manual inspections and allowing the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) to gather the intelligence and assess the device. With device intelligence acquired late into the journey and owned by the OEM, the operator experiences high risk for no trouble found (NFF) and the consequential costs. Market estimates indicate that U.S. operators experience approximately 40 percent NFF rates with an average cost of $220 per device in NFF scenarios, costing $44 million. By shifting device intelligence upstream into the hands of the operator’s frontline representatives, an operator could deflect up a significant amount of warranty exchange NFF cases and save money.
Similarly, in cases of call center operations, mobile operators have the opportunity to once again shift intelligence upstream to save on costs – only this time it shifts into the customer’s hands. Fifty-nine percent of customers want a digital-first approach that allows them to resolve device care issues on their own without a representative’s help. However, not offering diagnostic evaluation tools that can gather diagnostic intelligence can prevent a customer from resolving their issue, forcing them to call customer support centers to receive assistance. By sourcing device diagnostic data and delivering on the operator app via a health check, customers can better self-resolve and operators can deflect far more calls to the support center. This can lead to significant cost savings – millions of dollars.
Revenue generation
Mobile operators can create new business opportunities with customers by leveraging device intelligence and converting it into proactive “smart offers,” whereby the operator can upsell customers. These opportunities can include new postpaid plan offers, accessories or another strong add-on for increasing ARPU – insurance.
Once again, by shifting intelligence upstream to the frontline representatives, device intelligence allows mobile operators to open two opportunities with insurance: increasing attachment in the onboarding process for bring-your-own-device (BYOD) cases while minimizing risk and opening enrollment periods.
First, because operators lack insight into a foreign device with BYOD cases, leveraging diagnostic device intelligence at the retail hub allows the representatives to better assess risk before offering insurance to a new customer. Second, by sourcing diagnostic intelligence on a customer’s device from a health check, mobile operators can have real-time insights into device insurance eligibility. This enables operators to proactively offer insurance when a device is identified as eligible and remain unbound by the traditional bi-annual enrollment periods.
Why Mobile Operators Need a Platform to Translate Device Intelligence into Operational and Business Results
While the potential of device intelligence is vast, harnessing it and converting it into action requires a unified platform to scale its impact. A holistic, enterprise-level solution ensures that all the device data points from millions of customer devices can be collated, analyzed and acted upon in a timely, appropriate fashion seamlessly. With a platform unifying and collecting data and connecting channels, mobile operators can realize the benefits of the dDLM methodology, ultimately reducing friction across all processes and empowering operators to become proactive organizations.
More importantly, the ability to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to optimize dDLM is dependent on the platform structure. MCE’s platform approach offers an omni-channel, enterprise solution designed to source device intelligence from basic device information and diagnostic health checks to deliver on the promise of dDLM.
By integrating these tools across retail, support centers, and apps, MCE empowers mobile operators to meet customer needs proactively on their terms, ultimately driving the competitive growth mobile operators seek and reducing the cases of friction driving churn.
The once-futuristic digital customer is already well established. The time is now to get a head start on the next customer management revolution that is AI – powered by device intelligence. Contact MCE today to learn more about how our technology helps mobile operators get a holistic view of their mobile device customer base, empowering them to make smarter decisions around device lifecycle and customer management.
