Real-Time Customer Policy Management: Turning a Negative into a Positive

Does it strike you as odd that the communications  industry has set itself the worthy goal of improving customer experience but,  at the same time is still issuing confusing price plans for mobile data  services and putting caps on their usage?

It is vital that policy management 1.0  becomes policy management 2.0 as quickly as possible. The industry  acknowledges—or hides behind—the fact that a tiny percentage of customers use a  huge percentage of capacity. This does not mean that the rest of the customer  base should suffer from these boundaries placed on them by operators.

There is a better way.

First, many customers do not know when  they are nearing their usage limits. Many of those customers do not know what  will happen when they reach or exceed their limits - and should not have to  worry about it anyway. Even if usage alerts are available, there is no  guarantee that an alert will arrive before the usage limit is exceeded.

With the advances in analytics and real-time  information it is now possible to know how close a customer is to their limit,  and based on current usage, when they will exceed it. The telco or service  provider can—and should—manage this for their customers. Why not send a message  to customers—OK start with the most profitable ones—to let them know they have  used half their limit for this month. Ask them whether they feel they will be  within the limit this month, based on usage so far, or need a little extra.  Offer them advice and possible solutions—quickly, easily, intuitively. Along  the way, find out whether they have considered a family package or a multiple  device package that allows the family to do different things on different devices  in the same place and on the same plan.

We are all customers and we need to think  like customers when we put our policies in place. How else can you make your  customers feel special and decrease attrition?