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This time it's personal
Alex Leslie - Oct 23, 08:10 AM
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First came an idea. Two veterans of telecoms conferences were day dreaming somewhere in London. “What would be amazing,” said one, “would be if billing was on your handset.” This was five years before an iPhone. “Why not?” said the other, “you could get access to all your billing information, change tariff, pay the bill – all while walking down the street. And save a few trees.” Then there was talk of how it could be done – strange talk of APIs and interfaces and applications within texts. It all seemed far-fetched, but somehow achievable. That conversation was already long forgotten when a new wave of conferences landed on telecoms executives’ desks – all about business intelligence and understanding the customer and customer centricity. |
These conferences were being hosted against the backdrop of the emerging phenomenon of social media that no-one really understood and which, it turns out, is every bit as disruptive as the Internet was. This is where the customer gains control.
I have been trying to fathom what makes this quiet yet overwhelming revolution so fundamentally different and I think it is about transparency, trust and truth.
The ability of customers to control and share content means that the age of censorship is dying – because we can actually see what is happening with our own phones and computers. The age of media control is on its way out because we can check the truth with our friends – both real and virtual. This means that the age of being able to fool people is becoming a thing of the past.
We, the individuals, are becoming the centre of the web of our media lives. We now control it. The way we view companies and Governments is changing – and the way they interact with us must change too.
We no longer believe a company’s advertising. We check their claims. Two thirds of the information we rely on when we are buying something comes from sources other than the company that is selling to us. The opinions and experiences of other, like minded people will be the most influential thing in our lives.
All of this raises two important questions:
Question 1: how do companies sell to customers in the social media age? The answers might include ‘human recommendation agents’ who can influence their personal and professional networks. They might include highly targeted – actually personal – advertisements. Both of these can only be achieved by the use of business intelligence in ways that have never been implemented in the communications world.
Question 2: how do we bill for it? The balance of paying commissions to agents, the choice of viewing advertisements or not, the quality of service and customer service issues and a host of cultural challenges for companies will provide complexity on a scale never before seen in the communications world.
The introduction of a ‘billing app’ from Optus potentially provides a great step forward in this process. It is personal, it should allow customers to control their spending, their tariffs and how much ‘relevant’ information they receive from companies. Whether such a remote control billing device can deal with the recommendation angle too is perhaps some way in the future.
However, there will be arguments about whether a billing app on an iPhone is really the answer. It sounds too simple. The most recent BillingViews survey (results will be published soon) reveals that the biggest barrier to ‘next generation billing’ is not technology but the clutter of legacy systems and legacy thinking that still clogs up the meeting rooms of the majority of communications companies today.
That is what we need to address if we are to make a success of the social media phenomenon and create that personal win-win with the customer.
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