Customer lifecycle management – creating a virtuous cycle to grow your business

Customer Lifecycle Management, or CLM, has become a familiar abbreviation, which at first glance appears to be complex topic characterised by formal theories and marketing buzzwords. It is, in fact, a simple concept – every customer has a journey with a provider, from the initial engagement right through the entire relationship that, if successful, can provide further opportunities for both along the way. It’s a key discipline that can boost revenue and profit for MVNOs.

Put simply, customers need to be respected and nurtured so that they become a loyal advocate of your service or brand. Attracting customers – whether direct, retail, online, indirect, cross-selling, or by other means – is invariably expensive. So, having invested considerable sums in customer acquisition, MVNOs must ensure that the customer experience that follows is excellent and offered to the highest possible standards.

Optimised CLM can create customers who are advocates for your brand

When performed correctly, CLM can lead to loyal advocates for your brand, who are willing to purchase additional services and goods over the course of the relationship. In today’s highly competitive market, MVNOs must differentiate on the service they offer and, as this is not a fixed target, must continually aspire to enhance and improve the service delivered.

As a result, effective and efficient CLM is a critical discipline. It is fundamental for maximising revenue opportunities, creating lasting engagement and driving down costs.

That’s why Digitalk has created a new white paper that cuts through the jargon to explain what CLM means in practice and why and how it should play a fundamental role in your MVNO business, enabling you to deliver best-in-class service, minimise churn, maximise revenue opportunities and drive down operational costs.

In addition, it defines the tools that MVNOs need to help you more easily create and build a customised approach to CLM that is tuned to your business, products and services, and which is optimised to help them meet their business goals.

Understanding the basics

CLM is an ongoing process that covers the entirety of a customer’s relationship with its MVNO provider. This begins with awareness and, if skilfully executed and with the right tools to help, can result in sustained loyalty and recurring business – customers who maintain their subscriptions, continue to top-up their pre-paid accounts, and even spend more on additional products and services.

Our white paper outlines the five different customer lifecycle models – On-board, Engage, Maintain, Retain, Upsell. The customer relationship starts with first impressions: so, smooth on-boarding with well-communicated activation of a new subscription is essential.

Engagement is about promoting positive habits in the first few weeks of the relationship, which are crucial to encourage customers to become a highly engaged advocate of the service. While maintenance might sound like a boring topic, it is vital to ensure that customers remain comfortable with the service and feel that they are being actively looked after.

It’s a well-known fact that customer acquisition typically costs five times more than customer retention. So, when a customer’s head is turned by a competitor, or perhaps they are simply less convinced by the value they get from the service, it may be time to introduce a retention offer, even if this incurs additional cost. Conversely, it will help to build loyalty and advocacy, while minimising churn.

Finally, earning the trust of your customers is the basis of successful upselling – happy and loyal customers are more likely to receive offers positively and, in turn, buy more products and services. The second part of this white paper takes an in-depth look at how MVNOs can maximise customer value.

Integrated, automated CLM is the goal

Of course, with so many aspects to consider, automation is critical. It’s essential that MVNOs have a complete set of fully integrated applications to deliver effective, automated CLM – from a smooth activation procedure, backed by efficiently integrated logistics, and self-care options to create the right welcome atmosphere right through to automated alternative package or service options and offers that are well-targeted and delivered using highly sophisticated tools.

Actions must be associated with known data and events, so that rules to support automation of customer interaction processes can be created and run autonomously. This introduces a new level of sophistication, as rules can be defined to launch specific forms of engagement, based on triggers that are activated by a wide range of variables, conditions and reporting alarms.

Digitalk Mobile Cloud incorporates the key elements MVNOs need to support automated CLM – which are described in the paper, including customer state management, real-time events, dynamic rules, and enhanced customer self-care.

Our platform provides rich insights and tools that enable seamless CLM. Our comprehensive package enables MVNOs to grow their business and remain relevant to customers, while building long-term customer relationships and maintaining a differentiated service experience.

To be best-in-class takes effort, but Digitalk Mobile Cloud provides a complete solution to help minimise churn and drive down operational costs, while building a virtuous cycle of CLM at every point in the customer journey.

To find out more, download our white paper, here.