Your (not so) Typical Customer

Right now, your customer has 500 emails in his inbox, 20 voicemails on his phone, 85 percent of his DVR box is full. She has 25 apps uploaded on her iPhone (of which she only uses five on a daily basis). More often than not, he’s texting, emailing, watching CNN and eating all at the same time. She’s on the road 30 weeks a year and is constantly searching for a Wi-Fi connection. Yes, these customers may be typical high-powered executives, but they certainly don't want their CSP to treat them as anything like “typical.” They want a personalized experience, they want to be understood, and they want to know that someone is out there, listening and supporting them.

As competition continues to increase, treating customers as individuals (as opposed to a generic group, or worse, just another up-sell opportunity) will become a key differentiator for providers. Service providers will need to focus on understanding and anticipating customers’ needs. To do this, they must leverage technology that helps them understand and cater to the needs of customers' situation or location, their likes and dislikes. In other words, providers need to see the whole picture when it comes to their customers, and the only way they can achieve this is by marrying a customer's individual profile with their real-time usage call patterns to obtain a clear end-to-end visibility into customers' unique situations.

With competition steadily increasing, the ability to offer real-time personalized services, which are more useful than simple location-based promotions, will become a key differentiator for service providers. Only by gaining the complete view of the customer can CPSs hope to present tailored services that will appeal to, and make a difference for, their customers.

It’s this type of personalized service that will keep customers loyal and help providers maintain and grow market share in the future.