Recently I had a pleasure of delivering a keynote address to the Altán Summit in Acapulco, Mexico. Altán is a Qvantel key customer who offers wholesale mobile phone and Internet services for home and business. Their mission is to promote connectivity, digital inclusion and competition in the telecommunications industry in Mexico. To help do this they’re recruiting MVNOs to provide a retail distribution and sales network covering Mexico.
In my speech I gave some insights into how MVNOs can best compete and win in very competitive markets and provide the best level of service to their customers and to use this as a differentiator.
Picture 1: Ruben Lopez, Delivering Keynote Speech at Altán Summit
The MVNO market is tough. And the more price sensitive the market, then the tougher it gets. Margins are tight and often operating budgets are even tighter. Many MVNOs run a ‘no frills’ operating model where costs are kept down so they can afford to offer attractive prices to customers.
The main reason why people sign with MVNOs is price and the challenge many MVNOs have is keeping their customers and generating long-term loyalty. They want customers to stay because the MVNO is easy to do business with. Ideally there’s no shocks for customers and everything works just as it should. But, often, this is easier said than done. Poor customer service can be a killer for MVNOs. Because many operate mainly on a monthly subscription basis and / or pre-paid, customer churn can be a big problem. It’s very easy for customers to leave and sign up with another service provider if they get bad service. For many MVNOs in a particular country there is not a huge difference in pricing and so increasingly MVNOs are now looking as customer service as a differentiator. Good customer service impacts customer loyalty and If things work as expected customer tend to stick around and be loyal. But people tend to react more to bad experiences than good ones. Not only will customers leave but they often go onto social media to complain.
Getting customer service right is crucial for MNVOs and CRM is at the centre of this. If a potential customer tries to sign up with an MVNO but finds the on-boarding process take too long or is confusing, then this is the fault of the CRM system. Likewise, if an existing customer is trying to resolve an issue using webchat and gives up frustrated then this is down to poor CRM processes and systems.
With CRM MVNOs can’t afford to take chances. The CRM system they use must support customers at all stages in their lifecycle – from providing a fast and easy on-boarding experience, right up to when they terminate service. Ideally, the CRM enables the MVNO to provide such good service that there’s not too many terminations and the other steps in the customer lifecycle journey that need to be supported include new purchase support, managing payment methods, changing services, customer care and sales of services / devices. CRM must enable the best customer experience at every customer touchpoint for all stages in a customer lifecycle.
Picture 2: Altán and Qvantel executives at Altán Summit – Jose Medina, Americas Sales Director, Qvantel; Diego Ordoñez, CFO, Altán; and Rubén López, VP Americas, Qvantel
This is one reason why I’ve seen an increase in MVNOs investing in modern, cloud-native digital CRM systems. This is exactly what Altán did – by selecting to work with Qvantel they are giving all their MVNOs access to Qvantel Flex BSS running on AWS to provide a modern CRM system, that will enable them to deliver the best customer experiences and service possible. MVNOs and MVNEs can now use customer service as a differentiator and build loyalty. This also enforces the MVNO’s brand and build customer trust- which is essential if MVNOs look to expand their portfolio to provide digital services and beyond connectivity services.
If you’d like to find out more about how Qvantel enables MVNOs to compete and win – download our white paper on the Evolution of MVNOs – click here.