By Alun Lewis
Given the continuing explosion in devices and applications, it’s sometimes hard to remember that giving customers a near infinite choice of options creates its own problems.
While the industry has been focused on policy management disciplines as a way of throttling back usage and generating additional revenues, it could be missing a trick when it comes to using other tools to build customer relationships and sell more services.
That ‘missing trick’ – at least as far as Danny Kadish, CTO of idomoo is concerned – is the potential that automated video-supported billing has for creating a truly personalised interface with consumers out there.
“Though it’s been talked about for years, operators – especially where dual or triple-play services are concerned – have real problems when it comes to communicating with customers,” Kadish said. “General advertising – or even personal emails or phone calls – don’t really generate sufficient returns in practice. In addition, many users are alienated by over-complex tariff plans and get annoyed at paying what they see as expensive surcharges if they stray over pre-set limits.”
He continued, “At idomoo, we’ve developed what is essentially an automated video production facility – already in use by other industry sectors like insurance, who also have complex offerings and need opportunities to upsell other options – that can produce truly personalised video bills.
“These – sent to the customer’s phone or email – show usage and billing patterns in easy to understand ways, explain apparent billing anomalies like high charges and tell the customer how they can benefit by changing to another tariff. It’s also an opportunity to promote new devices and services to exactly the right target segments.”
Bill By Video Example