The Results Are In: Analytics Play a Key Role in Customer Retention

This year’s annual Comptel User Group will be one to beat – with visits to the Carlsberg Brewery and the famous amusement park, Tivoli, where many attendees rode the world’s oldest wooden rollercoaster. In addition to the fun had around Denmark, there were also many memorable conversations at the conference, most of which revolved around the customer experience.

Like at past user groups, Comptel held an interactive voting session where we polled our audience of customers and partners to gain deeper insights on the topic of analytics. The survey focused on customer retention strategies, including when and how to engage with subscribers, and what techniques telecom professionals are employing to keep them happy.

Sixty-seven percent of respondents said they believe inconsistent service quality and poor customer service are among the biggest contributors to churn. To help manage this, 64% of participants said anticipating subscribers needs with proactive care is one of the best strategies for handling service issues, like dropped calls, low bandwidth or sluggish file loading.

Some audience members mentioned that, now, the simple reality is many operators wait for customers to complain before addressing an issue. But as Stratecast analyst Jeff Cotrupe commented, it’s always better to be proactive – communications service providers (CSPs) must take on that active role to provide better service overall. And ultimately to reduce churn, it takes predictive and contextual analytics and personalized customer interaction capabilities.

For instance, following a service issue, 46% of respondents said that they would issue an apology, opportunity to upgrade or special discount to subscribers to boost loyalty. But when it comes to keeping customers satisfied, especially after a service issue, Telesperience analyst Teresa Cottam noted that CSPs’ response should depend on what is appropriate for each individual customer and situation. While an apology might be right for some, it might irk others. This is why the actions that CSPs take following an event should be rooted in analysis of subscriber data. Just as you want to personalise services, personalising a response to an outage or fail is equally as important.

Supporting this and signaling how pervasive analytics are becoming in the industry, three out offour attendees reported using analytics daily, weekly or monthly. This isn’t surprising given that almost half also believe targeted services are critical in mitigating turnover – an area where analytical insights play a crucial role.

Timing and context were deemed among the most important aspects for realising improvements in customer interaction and business performance. Building on this, participants saw a variety of attractive applications for advanced analytics to support business needs.

We at Comptel are thrilled for the industry to embrace analytics and contextual intelligence, and to see the new opportunities that will emerge from this for churn prevention, targeted marketing and other business opportunities. Did any of the results stand out to you? What do you think will have the most powerful effect on reducing churn?

To download the full presentation, click here.