New study by Freeform Dynamics highlights barriers to widespread adoption of effective customer retention strategies for mobile operators

Mobile network operators accept the principle of customer centric marketing, but marketing tool-kit restricts implementation

4th December 2008: Customer-centric marketing is increasingly perceived as the Holy Grail for mobile telecoms operators in the 21st century. But generic customer relationship management (CRM) systems, fragmented data and poor campaign monitoring and reporting systems are undermining the ability of mobile marketers to put subscribers at the heart of their marketing relationships.

So says a mobile community research report commissioned by Business Logic Systems and conducted by the London analyst firm Freeform Dynamics.

Called Mobile Marketing Imperatives: Transitioning to a customer-centric approach, the report is based on interviews with chief marketing officers (CMO) and campaign managers at 13 Tier 1 and Tier 2 mobile operators in Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

Using the insights into best practice gleaned from discussions with the panel, Mobile Marketing Imperatives outlines a set of key principles and imperatives that mobile marketers should consider in their path toward a genuinely customer-centric culture.

The report also shows that at a time when many mobile markets are saturated, panel members are placing ever more emphasis on developing customer loyalty programs, improving customer segmentation and aligning systems and processes to make customer-centric marketing a reality.

However, most members of the survey panel agreed that set-up delays, cost over-runs, lack of automation and over-reliance on IT departments affected their ability to execute campaigns. Poor lead monitoring systems mean that non-performing campaigns are often not spotted until they are too late to rectify.

Josie Sephton, principal telecoms analyst at Freeform Dynamics and report co-author, said the “combination of suboptimal systems and processes, along with a disjoint between functions can create both frustration and dissatisfaction issues among staff, and perpetuate political problems between departments.”

Corporate-wide CRM systems such as Oracle’s Siebel, are typically not one-size-fits-all, as was perhaps first assumed when the original business cases were made. The functionality they provide is not always adequate when dealing with the more real-time nature of highly interactive campaigns driven directly via the handset. The end result is the heavy emphasis on manual processing and IT integration workarounds.

So what is to be done? Clearly, replacing current systems that do a good job in most other areas is not the right thing to do. As one panel member put it:

“We have invested a lot of time and money into our current systems. To replace them is not an option, nor is it necessary. However, it would be a useful exercise to consider solutions and approaches that could help address our issues without having to change everything.”

Stewart Goldberg, chairman of Business Logic Systems, a specialist in customer intelligence, marketing automation and customer loyalty solutions for mobile network operators comments:

“This study highlights that mobile operators need effective tools, which can be integrated easily with existing systems, to develop fully-automated marketing processes.  By building personalised and relevant dialogue with their customers, mobile operators can encourage profitable behaviours and create long-term subscriber loyalty.  The challenge lies in rapidly interpreting customer usage data to gain an holistic view of customer activity for accurate campaign targeting.   Business Logic Systems is working with a number of operators to address this ‘real time’ challenge and achieve an improved return on investment from their CRM systems.