CEM

that experience is for their customers throughout the
lifecycle,” he says. “They are starting to create a vision
of CEM and work backwards from that in terms of the
solutions they buy.”
CEM investments aren’t just about increasing
customer satisfaction, there is also a revenue angle
that CSPs are pursuing. “Customers are satisfied
when the service they receive is of a good quality but
they’re also satisfied when a relevant offer is made to
them in a timely fashion,” says Edwards. “In the past,
the whole process of service delivery platforms, which
could be quite cumbersome, could mean the cost of
delivery for services could be quite high. That
presented a relatively high entry point for the costs of
services and limited CSPs’ opportunities.”
“With a more real-time billing capability and the other
elements we’ve talked about, the cost to deliver or
serve is significantly reduced and becomes a few
cents versus euros,” he adds. “That opens up
possibilities to enter into micro economies where
services might have a short life.”
Edwards gives the example of offering a roaming
bundle to travellers or pushing a short offer to a user
while they are engaged in a specific activity such as if
they’re watching video and reaching the end of their
data package. A simple push message could be sent
saying: Video data upgrade €2 yes or no? In that
scenario, everyone wins because the marketing is not
intrusive, the user gets to continue with their session
and the CSP makes a little more revenue.
Such opportunities and models will proliferate as
CSPs continue the transformation to become DSPs.
“CSPs are trying to get into the business of offering
more timely services,” confirms Edwards. “Users are
willing to pay €2 a day or an hour for specific services
when they need them but, to make the right offers,
relevance and timing are key. You need information
about the customer to know what they like, what their
preferences are and what they’ve bought before. Even
if it’s aggregated information across a demographic, it
still becomes extremely important.”
Edwards thinks CSPs’ direction of travel is set
towards this. “This absolutely is the evolution that
needs to happen,” he says. “There are different stages
of advancing to become DSPs and most CSPs
recognise it’s not about providing a data pipe, it’s
about understanding users’ contexts in terms of their
data usage and quality of service.”
He singles out the recently launched iD MVNO by UK
electronics retailer Dixons Carphone Warehouse as a
good example of a provider that looks more like a
DSP than a traditional CSP and MDS is helping others
on similar journeys.
CEM investments
aren’t just about
increasing customer
satisfaction, there is
also a revenue angle
that CSPs are
pursuing
www.mdscem.com
VANILLAPLUS MAGAZINE I AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2015
47