1 You are having discussions with the Chief Marketing Office

1. You are having discussions with the Chief Marketing Officer of a Tier 3 wireless carrier based in India. The wireless carrier currently has 15 million subscribers and the Chief Marketing Officer would like to increase its subscriber base by 5 million subscribers over the next 2 years. What type of market information would you want to know before making a recommendation? After gathering that information, what are potential recommendations you would advise?

2. You are the leader of a team responsible for increasing the average revenue per subscriber of a low market share wireless carrier based in South Africa that offers prepaid wireless service. What potential actions would you explore to improve the average revenue per subscriber?

3. The Chief Marketing Officer of a major wireless carrier based in South America has told your team it is facing a subscriber defection problem. Over the past 18 months, subscriber loss has increased from 2% per month to 4% per month. The Chief Marketing Officer has asked you to lead a team to help turn around the situation and reverse the trend back to 2% loss per month within the next 18-24 months. The Chief Marketing Officer believes that a big part of the solution will be software upgrades. What type of enterprise software upgrades do you think could help reduce subscriber losses?

4. \"You are meeting the Chief Marketing Officer of an Eastern European wireless carrier for the first time. You want to understand what her core issues are regarding subscribers and revenue. How would you approach the situation and what questions would you ask?\"

5. Out of the customers you currently have engagements with, some are in the US, some in Eastern Europe and one in the Caribbean. How do you organize your weekly schedule, to ensure that you have a weekly call with each of the customer’s key contacts to ensure each engagement is on track?

Solution

?2. Actions taken to improve the average revenue per subscriber: If carried out in a targeted and timely manner, addressing prepaid customers has proven to increase overall revenues by as much as 6-8 percent. Tactics that entice customers to top-up when their balance is low and the revival of silent customers with contextual offers can pay huge dividends if presented at exactly the right time and within context.

The challenge to retain customers is, however, particularly demanding in the prepaid sector ? it is a notoriously price-sensitive sector and easy for customers to switch providers.

Know your audience -

In the past, lack of connected systems between internal departments meant that company could not act quickly and automatically upon pertinent data, presenting marketers with a challenge in trying to segment and deliver offers which meet users needs in a timely manner.

However, technology is now available to allow company to target subscribers with personalized offers in real time to entice them to top up more frequently, increase usage and minimize the all-important silent periods.

There are tactics which can be used to great effect if the timing and offer presented are right.

The key was to identify high-churn risk subscribers and encourage them to recharge more frequently through the right retention offer. A few examples below:

a. Company could provide offers such as : if you recharge more than $30 get 10 percent immediate bonus and 20 percent discount on calls to a relevant destination.

b. Benefits might also relate to other lines of business, e.g. top-up $15 and get two ringtones for free.

c. Company can also automatically target subscribers who have not responded to previous incentives and target them with a more enticing offer, for example: recharge more than $30 and get 10 percent bonus on all recharges during the next month.

These activities encourage subscribers to frequently recharge, whilst promoting other services, giving subscribers an incentive to remain active.

Context is everything - There is need to work at ensuring that they target the subscriber with relevant offers at the right time. It is essential to ensure subscribers do not reach zero balance, as each day that passes from this point means the subscriber could be switching provider.

The second factor that study is the date of the last call.

The right offer can make the difference between retaining a customer or failing to act and losing them to a competitor. To summarize, we believe that targeted and tailored offers in the prepaid sector can pay real dividends.