Managing event-driven customer relationships in telecommunications

Abstract

Marketing managers in the telecommunication industry are facing a number of business challenges. Despite large investments to retain and to develop customers, high churn rates and decreasing average revenue per user are the result. Often, blanket promotions are deployed, which destroy value through discounts and free services. Frequently, the customer lifecycle approach is ignored by offering these services, and therefore the possibility of tailoring relationship strategies to customer behaviour and value is missed. A systematic approach is necessary to plan a campaign and to evaluate its value. Each campaign is a financial investment for the enterprise. If no thorough planning is made, the enterprise risks selecting the wrong target group, the wrong offers and the wrong channel. The aim of this paper is to discuss a systematic approach to plan and carry out a campaign using Business Intelligence methods. First, the time should be identified that the customer recognises a need in order to send the appropriate marketing message. Secondly, the offer has to meet customers' needs and it has to be relevant at the specific time. Thirdly, the right communication channel should be identified based on customer value and needs. Finally, the campaign performance should be improved incrementally through an ongoing measurement of results. A proposed follow-up paper will deal with the implementation aspects of the Event-Driven Relationship Concept and the ‘event driven metrics’ that can be used to measure the success of a campaign.