Telecoms, otherwise known as telephone companies, provide telecommunications services and have played a major role in the rapid advancement of globalization.
The first telephone services have been dated back to 1878 on both sides of the pond in New Haven, Connecticut, and London, UK. Today there are hundreds of telecoms generating billions of revenue a year through mobile, data and broadband services.
However, as society continues to forge ahead in development, all telecoms are facing the same challenges: loyalty, ever-changing policies, unpredictable economic climates and major shifts in consumer behaviour.
The question at hand is: how can telecoms diversify their service and boost customer loyalty in uncertain times, with a long-term solution?
The challenges Telecoms are facing today
Loyalty
Loyalty is one of the main challenges that telecoms are impacted by today. According to Accenture, 77% of customers are willing to retract their loyalty towards a specific provider. This comes as no surprise during hard financial times when customers are looking for the best deal, therefore service and loyalty become an afterthought.
Previously, an effective strategy was creating long-term contracts (18-36 months) whilst offering a discounted price. However, this did not align with consumer behaviour who were always looking for the latest new thing.
Following this discovery, there's been an obvious effort to redo those practices. For example, companies may offer a 36-month contract with the option to renew after 24 months if you'll stay with them. Or pay a little extra month to change your policy, device or deal whenever you're ready.
Changing policies
The policies governments and organizations introduce can have a major impact on how telecoms operate. The changes required to make in such a short period of time require resources (both physical and monetary), often leading to a decline in business performance.
A recent example would be Ofcom's ruling for telecom providers to notify customers when their contracts were ending. As for most subscription-based businesses, once a contractual agreement is over, the subscription is automatically renewed unless you choose to opt-out. With the busy schedules many people live, they simply forget to search the market and automatically sign up for a new cycle.
This can either be in favour of the customer or the provider. Since this policy was introduced in 2020, 62% of broadband customers switched to a new deal with their provider or left to find a better deal elsewhere. There's also been a rapid surge in traffic to comparison platforms as customers are now alert and actively looking for better deals nearer to the end of their agreement.
Current economic climate
It's not hard to miss that the world is in a global economic crisis. Whilst recessions and crises will always happen, as shown throughout history, the current situation has been heightened by the impact of Covid-19.
In the UK, at the time that this article was published, inflation is at an all-time high of 11.1%. A steep rise from the annual target of 2%. Wages, however, are not following the same trajectory. In the three months leading to August 2022, regular pay grew by 6%. When adjusted for inflation, total pay fell by 2.4%.
Naturally, customers have a vested interest in maintaining a lifestyle for themselves. With the figures above, and emphasizing our earlier point of loyalty, during tough times, customers focus more on price than loyalty.
The answer here then is that telecoms need to put more focus on customer retention and create tangible and value-led reasons for customers to stay with them, rather than acquiring new customers solely. This leaky bucket strategy is extremely inefficient. This has been proven by companies like Verizon who increased their prices in an attempt to beat inflation, whilst also targeting new customers. They predicted 167,000 new customers in Q2 of 2022 but had only acquired 12,000 because customers want a better deal. In this scenario, there was no incentive for customers to jump ship and board their boat.
Shifting consumer behaviour
Whether corporations believe in it or not, sustainability is going to play a major part in every business over the next coming years. In a report by Analysys Mason, they found that the newer a mobile device, the more essential sustainability is to a customer. 
Customers are now more aware than ever of the cost to the environment, especially when it comes to telecoms. This industry alone is predicted to be responsible for 14% of global carbon emissions by 2040 – a 3-4% increase.
So not only is price a determining factor, but also sustainability. Let’s look at how one of Britain’s biggest telecom providers is solving this issue.
The O2 Case Study
Similarly, to the issues presented above, O2 faces the challenges of user loyalty for their MyO2 app, user app engagement and how to combine their efforts with supporting ESG initiatives.
There was nothing readily on the marketing to help solve this problem – until now.
Kindred for Business is an external app monetization tool helping companies generate incremental revenue, boost loyalty, and support sustainable causes.
We partnered with O2 to create an integration for their app to achieve all of the above and the results have been mind-blowing – if we can say so ourselves.
This integration is called the ‘Feel Good Shopping Feature’ embedded in the MyO2 app where users get to shop through the app, receiving discounts from thousands of online merchants. O2 receives a commission on each purchase, and to support their ESG initiatives, they put their earnings towards reforestation projects. At the time this article was published, we’ve helped O2 plant over 140,000 trees.
The Feel Good Shopping feature is a win-win for O2 customers; at a time when people want to be more aware of their spending, they can now save money at thousands of retailers, whilst also supporting projects that protect the planet." - Simon Valcarcel, Marketing Director at Virgin Media O2
Whilst 36% of executives feel they’ll encounter setbacks with ESG, customer resistance, tech-related issues and reliable data insights, our tech proves this not to be the case. This is how:
- Tech-related issues: When you work with Kindred, you have a whole army working around the clock to see you succeed. You handle business, we handle the tech.
- Customer resistance: Through our work with O2, it’s evident that customers see the value in the Feel Good Shopping feature on their MyO2 app. Customers shop approximately 3.7x a month on the app with the feature activated.
- Reliable data insights: Our reporting API helps us produce accurate data for our partners so they can find out data such as where their customers' shop, how much they spend and how to tap into their consumer behaviours.
- ESG: When users shop on the MyO2 app, their savings are automatically put towards sustainable programmes such as reforestation and reducing carbon emissions. This is all done through our system, meaning O2 is not required to manually make the donations. Their users also have a seamless experience.
The cost of loyalty programmes for telecoms
Loyalty programmes can help telecoms hold onto their customers, but what can stop many from implementing a scheme is the cost. The biggest costs they’d face would be marketing (developing a strategy, execution and getting the word out), customer service support, constant technical development, and of course time.
What’s exciting about our solution is that we give you a loyalty programme without the stress. We have a team of developers ready to help you integrate our technology and support your team on a long-term basis, and we also assist with marketing where our team of strategists can put together all the materials required should you need it.
Never before has there been a solution so easy to implement.
We know, it sounds too good to be true. But it's not.
Conclusion
To summarise, telecoms are facing major challenges which may only be heightened by the upcoming global economic crisis. However, companies like O2 are finding new and innovative ways to retain customers and support ESG initiatives all at the same time with Kindred for Business.
Not only is it easy to integrate, but it’s also a win-win for everyone. Good for the planet, good for your customers and good for business. Gone are the days when you had to wait years to see an ROI on loyalty schemes. Our tech helps you start earning revenue instantly!
Make sure you download the case study so you can learn more about how they’ve achieved this with our tech in detail.
We are open for business and ready to help you fill the holes that your company may be facing with our unique, one-of-a-kind external app solution. To learn more, book a call with a member of our team here.
