Outlook Point of View March 2008, No. 1 By Astrid Bohé and Diego Mora Oviedo To read offline:
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PDF Help Customer-centricity is critical to achieving high performance for today's communications, high-tech and media companies. Organizations now must compete more than ever on how well they understand their customers, how they enable customers to interact in a Web 2.0 world, and how they harness the information and data about those customers across multiple touchpoints. A key aspect of a customer-centric strategy is the customer portal. These multi-channel applications enable the creation, sharing and distribution of personalized content, as well as access to social networking and self-service capabilities. From a service provider's perspective, portals enable the segmentation, aggregation and delivery of rich media, communications and service experiences while driving customer service costs down. Portals are a means of supporting growth through increased usage of data and services, targeted to a consumer's needs, interests and location. Accenture believes that a two-part strategy is essential: pursuing "in-portal propositions" for users to access content provided by a carrier, as well as "off-portal" capabilities, which provide access to the broader Internet world. Major Trends: Seamless Experiences, Support for User-Generated Content and Communities
An essential goal in a converged digital environment is for service providers to enable a seamless experience for customers accessing content from any location and across the "three screens" of the consumer: the PC, television and mobile phone. Another important trend is toward enabling the distribution of user-generated content and participation in extended social networks. The Accenture Global Digital Home Consumer Survey, for example, found that significant numbers of consumers want to create and share their own content, which is a huge opportunity for carriers that can support that kind of activity. Another Accenture research report, "Mastering Social Ecosystem Marketing," found that companies must perform more sophisticated customer segmentations today—moving beyond a focus on individual buying habits toward a deeper understanding of how people interact as part of extended household and social networks. Yesterday’s thinking was about “consumers”; today’s thinking is about “communities.” The mobile Internet is a big part of this future: linking friends, classmates and families with each other and with external resources such as companies, libraries and universities. Accordingly, one type of application that has yet to be sufficiently exploited in the mobile world is the “social portal”—the equivalent of MySpace or Facebook or other social environments that are now accessed primarily through a PC. SK Telecom in South Korea is one early adopter of this idea of mobile social communities. Its Cyworld community has more than 18 million customers, which is 40 percent of the country’s total population. The site already has more than 20 million unique visitors per day. A Two-Part Portal Strategy
We believe that carriers—especially mobile carriers—must create a two-fold portal strategy, combining in-portal and off-portal propositions to access content and communications services. In-portal propositions grant users access to dedicated content and communications services controlled by the carrier—delivered through the first screen a user sees when turning on a mobile device. The off-portal proposition opens up the gates to the outside world of the Internet, where control of what a customer does or buys would instead be shared by service providers such as Amazon, Google and YouTube. A good balance of the off-portal and in-portal proposition is one where access to open Internet (off-portal) is granted through the first screen (on-portal). That would allow carriers to avoid losing control over data services and the customer experience. Indeed, the primary challenge with the on-portal proposition will be to hold the user's interest at the first screen by aggregating innovative services, granting better control of services to the end user though a rich user experience, offering competitive prices and using one-to-one marketing techniques. Only with this approach can carriers hope to create more value than simply providing commoditized bandwidth to other content companies. To be compelling, a portal must be built based on the customers’ desire to maintain control of their mobile communications and entertainment experiences, and to participate as members of a community or social ecosystem. Driving Usage
Wireless broadband (also known as fourth-generation, or 4G, technologies) can be a difficult business case for a typical communications company to make. But some of that difficulty is related to looking at the issue with the wrong lenses. If there is a business case to be made with wireless broadband services, it cannot be done so merely by thinking of these technologies as the means to drive a modest increase in subscribers based on a few new services. Instead, the case for 4G must be made by thinking in terms of increased usage—and in terms of the radical transformation wrought on the marketplace when the in-home/out-of-home distinction begins to go away. When consumers can access media content through a portal as easily from their cars as from their living rooms, then the business case begins to fill in gradually, one piece at a time. Portals open up different lines of revenue by expanding the scope of innovation and the scope of impact. An effective customer portal is, therefore, at the heart of making the business case for wireless broadband services. An effective portal drives usage. It captures not only the first screen to the consumer but all consumer screens. Benefits of an Effective Customer Portal Solution
An effective customer portal strategy can advance companies toward high performance by delivering a host of important benefits: Lower Costs and Higher Productivity
A customer portal can help carriers reduce their operating expenses, thanks to self-service capabilities and more rapid development times. For example, Telenor’s "ePortal" customer service channel, developed with Accenture, provides personalized information about available services and provides answers to account queries. The portal has proven very popular with customers, who are now more likely to use the self-service channel than to call for assistance. By enabling its customers to get a wide range of new and personalized services online—including special offers, recent statements and the ability to pay bills—Telenor has cut traffic to its call center up to 20 percent, reducing its cost base while improving customer loyalty and satisfaction. Improved Customer Control Over Rich and Relevant Content
Customers now expect to create, shape, share and receive their own content—accessing it whenever, wherever and however they want. An effective portal solution enables the delivery of today’s most important Web 2.0 capabilities, including mobile social networks, rich Internet applications, blogs, wikis and mash-ups. Better Customer Segmentation and Delivery of Relevant Services
Portals can enable carriers to target multiple customer segments with as many differentiated and constantly evolving product and service bundles as possible. A high-performance communications and high-tech company must look to develop a single, real-time view of customer activity across all customer touchpoints. This requires advanced information management and business intelligence capabilities. We believe that advanced database management is a core competency of the new, customer-centric company. Powerful Aggregation
An effective portal strategy enables providers to aggregate and control innovative suppliers and third-party services, extracting value beyond data traffic. The architecture at the heart of Accenture's customer portal solution, for example, is our Service Delivery Platform, a standardized service creation architecture that enables operators to rapidly create dynamic and flexible end-user services. An Improved Customer Experience and Better Service
Portals can help carriers offer differentiated customer service capabilities while keeping costs under control. With advanced self-service capabilities built on easy-to-use interfaces, customers can complete transactions without the need for assistance. Customer portals are essential digital gateways that can help service providers differentiate themselves to achieve high performance in a crowded marketplace, giving customers the interactivity, flexibility and variety of content they demand. In a house, in a car, at work, out shopping—wherever they are, customers want ready access to information and services. Companies must be prepared to deliver that access. Astrid Bohé, a senior executive in Accenture Systems Integrations & Technology, is the global lead for the company’s Information Management System Communications & High Tech initiative. Senior Manager Diego Mora Oviedo leads Accenture Communications & High Tech in Colombia. To Top |