Next Level of U&R Series II – Single View of customer

We had seen in the previous blog (Next Level of U&R Series I – Household), how interesting the view of customer under the umbrella of Household can become.Now Let us understand how Single view can able to turn the world upside down.

There is me who had taken one ordinary prepaid voice connection from the operator. I may be tagged as low ARPU-not so profitable- voice subscriber for the service provider but I am spending on an average Indian rupees 350 for DTH and around my ARPU is 850~900 for wireless data connection from the same operator. In most likely scenario I am registered and regonised as 3 different customers in the system.

(pic1 : Multiservice_teleco_environment:- Product View)

Now, In the light of this new revealation I become worth Rs. 1,200+ ARPU customer if not subscriber. And If I am unhappy, I may end up churning all of the services eventually, given a chance all together..


There could be different business owners and product managers handling different services used by me. And Me as subscriber may have different priority importance to different business unit owners. But for an entire organization my Single View makes much sense.

(pic2 : Multiservice_teleco_environment:- Single View is Customer Centric)

For me as well as for organization it is going to make lot of sense. Especially becoz:-
1. Today's cut-throat competition to provide best value for money
2. Retain the better loyalty of volatile customers and
3. Pressure on optimizing cost as well
This view should able to bring lot of synergy.  Is there ways to achieve these?
Yes, certainly Effective use of CAN, BAN numbers and many more such tactical and strategic ways to achieve this Single view and Household view of the Customers.


First there is need to come to the conclusion and conviction that these things will add value to the over all organizations fututre growth and attach some value to this (tangible, not so tangible values leading to direct and indirect monitory benefits) If you are interested we can discuss it in depth.


Get in touch on email or on my cell. Love to improve collective understanding about the customer behavior as a product marketing professionals.

Next Level of U&R- Series I - (HOUSEHOLD)

Let us understand how telecom needs to adore HOUSEHOLD concept. Imagine a scenario I am a customer on the network giving reasonable ARPU little less than avg.Individually I may not be giving operator good ARPU to get gold/platinum treatment. But I have 4 connection from the operator as FAMILY HOUSEHOLD.


1. Landline for home,
2. Connection for my wife who shares it with my son
3. Connection for my daughter and
4. Of course I have one connection


(This is hypothetical.. I am not tht old to hv such big family yet :-)
Let me tell you it is very difficult to understand for the operator that 4 services (customers) from the same family being catered. Current scenario is something like below in most of the cases.

Loose Concept of Household

Does telecom operator realize the need? It started.. and even some started acting on it agressively as well. Will there be enough returns vs. efforts required to put these things in place. I guess yes! Study says propensities to keep latched to the services increase if entire family is with same service providers.

With small gratitude and promotion can gain large loyalty from such customers. Fitting individual customer into Household concept can give all together different perspective, segmentation and some additional success into U&R.

Re-Discover Underlying Household Connection

Challenges remain in the way currently customer profile been captured in the system.and will alwasy remain... But there are many practical ways, small campaigns and mechanism  to understand these co- relations, And overcome impossible looking challenges. Need is for lot of determination and conviction..

If interested let us discuss some time. Single person and its understanding is never complete, exchanging thought will improve our understanding on this subject.For contact credential, pls take it from my profile.. And who knows our collective thoughts can lead to new way of life in for VAS and other CLM activites.


In the Next Series will discuss about Single View of Customer. Till then happy reading, thinking..

LBS-Location Based Services : Is it localized enough?

Location Based Services is good buzz word. But it requires lot of preparations. Good to have kind of services espcially in 3G environment and business case on paper could as strong as creating another mini-Google at least! if not more ;-)  I believe at some time in the past or current all the product manager at telco, IT, VAS providers had been exploring some or other options for LBS. LBS has been making rounds of Buzz across telecom world but no one able to crack it successfully at least in India till the time (May be blind dating could be exception. If one want to bet on it, which can turn real ugly..) I just feel till the time no stronger business case has been built to overcome these challenges.

Let us see what the key challenges to address among others:

• Mapping of Geo information accurately with BTS
• Updating hardware/software to support LBS transaction
• Viable business model- time, efforts and resource requirement
• No pan India strong player available to support localized enriched information
• Astronomical cost involved going local
• Wide base accepted services to create stickiness

Does it mean LBS is failure. Certainly not, in fact it has to be the future of wireless 2G,3G or 4G technology. Challenge is to decode the information enrichment for making LBS success.

What could it be? It may be a strong business partner(s) or service providers syndicates who can enrich local information to support LBS.
Strong business partner can have option to go on his own, invest astronomical amounts and enrich localized information or go on user generated content model and pray for enrichment of content. Or could find right mix where invest into create critical mass of information to make it interesting for the users to use and enhance it further when cost of enrichment will diminish over a period as users starts contributing heavily.

The above decision depends on various factors like 1) Cost of creating information content , 2) Critical mass of information content, 3) Advertising budget, 4) Customers level of desire to grab the info content provided, 5) Suitability of the same for the customer consumption & instant gratification, 6) Level of involvement of the customer and 7) Opportunities for the customer to generate information content.

If you are really interested, there is lot to discuss, drop me e-mail or call me; we can discuss it further.

3G Myths

3G will bring back opportunities to cater high ARPU customers!
But I believe 3G will just open window of opportunities
And within itself 3G or 4G will do nothing beyond that.

The eco-system requires for popularizing the 3G business model-which can manipulate true power of anywhere, anytime high speed Internet (broadband)  Or it will end up as additional window dressings, just a clutter breaker talking point to attract and retain existing base and there will no additional est. income/business  as hugely anticipated.



3G has even more striking need to reach sooner to Bottom of the service user’s Pyramid for:-

1. To bring economy of scale

2. Help to reduce equipment costs

3. Promote accelerated growth in apps/services considering wireless broadband



Till such time who will fund the growth? Let me guess it will not be in few hundred crores of rupees.

It will be much more than this. Because to make it happen economy of scale to be attained by creating faster demand and consumption of services lot of spending/sponsorship is required for creating

a) Opportunities to use (options and innovations, policies)

b) Lot of pull – compelling services (R&D expenses)

c) Education and awareness

d) Complete supporting/conducive infrastructure

3G early Ecosystem Drivers-Contributors

Right business model is the need rather differentiating from existing predominantly voice retail business support model. Challenge is to crack orbit shifting business model to milk 3G opportunities and creating progressive ecosystem, policies to support the next growth driver to sustain pace and the manner telecom juggernaut creating economic revolution.