Getting the most out of existing customers and breeding loyalty with the existing customer base.

Creating a single view of every telecom customer through a CRM system is becoming the Holy Grail for every company. This delivers an understanding of what the customer wants and will also enable companies to service their customers better – from content provision to billing.

Telecoms operators will increasingly be faced with customer demands for new and innovative services delivered simply via a converged model but being able to do this depends on Telcos really tracking and understanding the needs of customers.

Focusing on the Customer
Many large organizations continue to focus on growing revenues and profits, first and foremost. The reality is that there exists a far more effective success strategy: focus on the customer and the customer’s intent in interacting with the company. I expect this year will see a concerted effort on the part of the network operators to turn the wealth of information they have on their customers into valuable insight that they use to enrich their offering and, hopefully, stop customers from defecting.

Another aspect is CRM analytics. This has become, and will continue to be, critical in helping organizations better understand buying behavior and helping in developing, tailoring and cross-selling solutions across the customer base. Having the information to be able to identify cross-selling and bundling opportunities will be absolutely crucial in the race for market share as it really will be all about sales on value-added services.

However, two key priorities remain:

• Understanding the customer
  Companies are likely to invest a lot of time and effort in really understanding the customer. None of the large companies really know what customers are using and what they really want. The trend will be for tracking usage patterns and developing apps according to want and need. Here a better understanding of the needs of individual customers is an important element of improving customer satisfaction and aiding customer retention.
• Keeping hold of existing customers
  What naturally falls out of a deeper level of understanding of customer buying and usage information is an ability to track what customers really like and develop content/services accordingly. It sounds simple, but by providing a service that you know a customer already wants will not only save money in development costs but will also help the customer feel he/she is valued.

Olivier Chomono
Project Director EMEA
Following a degree in Electronics and Computer Sciences, Olivier also attended the Lille school of Management (EQUIS accredited) before joining Ernst & Young for an internship. He has worked for the European Commission in Bulgaria, CapGemini, PeopleSoft and Oracle. Since 2001 he has worked as a senior CRM consultant and is currently Project Director EMEA for Atos Origin.