Future Of Telecom In India – Premium Vs Rural Customer Segmentation
At the recently held IAMAI Panel I posed a question to the Mobile VAS panel moderated by Manoj Dawane of Mauj Telecom. My question was..
‘Do they see telecom operators offering services as per customer segments in the future i.e. premium services for premium customers?’
The answer was a unanimous ‘YES’ from the panel which also included Lloyd Mathias of Tata Teleservices and Krishna Durbha of Reliance Communications. Now before you start wondering what the hell customer segmentation means for telecom operator and how it would be implemented let me try and give a similar example from another industry.
Telecom Services Could Follow Credit Card Service Model Of Customer Segmentation?
Imagine if all banks offer the same credit cards with the same credit limit and the same set of discounts and services and the same service level as well. I mean no silver, gold or platinum cards concept just a plain vanilla credit card. Imagine as a customer that pays them on time and has a credit capacity of a few lakhs a month you would surely get very frustrated by this plain vanilla approach right? Isn’t this exactly the way the telecom services work?
I get the same level of service that a consumer of Vodafone gets who pays 1/10th my monthly bill. For the record my monthly bill for this month is 5,500 rupees which means im 20 times more valuable than the average customer for any mobile operator. But I obviously don’t get even twice as much preference as their regular customer does. So in essence im treated like any customer because today I don’t have the option to shift my number to another operator as MNP is still to be implemented.
What about Post MNP Era?
I know I know MNP has been delayed endlessly but Im hoping in 2010 it will eventually happen and when it does it puts interesting permutations and combinations on what could happen. Nielsen had done a survey recently which attempted to measure the impact of MNP on various operators. Also with the low cost of shifting which is pegged at 19 rupees only it seems very likely that MNP could change a lot of things for the telecom industry.
Here is our take on what could happen?
- Premium customers to get their due?
A customer like me who has an average billing of 4000 rupees per month would benefit from better services from operators and they would start offering discounts, freebies, GPRS and 3G services to retain such customers.One could also see bundled services and better customer service for such customers only. A premium sim card could be launched as well tied in with offers from various fine dining restaurants, shop etc.
- Rural customer to find a voice
As the market saturates in Urban cities and towns for large telecom players rural penetration becomes more important. Rural customers don’t care much about data services just yet and may be extremely price sensitive and hence the current plans and pricing may not be really applicable for the rural areas. One may have to look at a different branding and segmentation for the rural customers and probably bundle rural centric services with the device to look at penetrating this market. Just like blackberry is bundled with an operator a rural specific phone could be bundled with an operator to penetrate the rural markets.
In conclusion
After 500 million mobile subscribers the way for upcoming mobile operators to grow is customer segmentation and appropriate targeting and branding for the same. Premium customers will shift his or her operator for priority services and enhanced data and voice offerings while rural customer will need to be penetrated with relevant service offerings that make their lives better.
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Do you think that for telecom giants will be able to sustain in the market and also generate revenue and profit in future after launching of MNP as Sevices would be more important than the product.
My view is that the market will consolidate sooner or later.