In Part 1 of the series, we discussed the opportunity dormant roamers present to operators. Today we’ll outline three simple strategies to create active data roaming users by enhancing visibility, increasing engagement with subscribers and making purchases easier on-device.

Beyond Real-time Visibility: An Opportunity to Upsell Direct to the Device

By providing real-time visibility to customers, through alerts for instance, mobile operators have an excellent opportunity to incorporate relevant offers; a simple example would be “You have reached your data limit. Would you like to purchase additional data?”
Mobile operators also have the opportunity to go a step further and substantially increase sales conversion rates by taking into account the specific customer information and context to trigger more relevant offers, at the most appropriate time.

1. Better Engage with Data Roamers to Upsell Packages

Data service passes are time-based offers which provide casual access to data services to meet various roamers’ needs. They can combine multiple parameters such as data volume, time, or access to specific applications; for example: 30MB for 1 day or unlimited access to Google Maps for a week. They represent a very simple and effective model that provide the total cost control that customers want and that have been a barrier to data roaming usage.

For example, a customer is identified to be at an airport, but he appears not to be there as often as an airport worker; this could then trigger a roaming offer. Another example could be an outbound roaming customer who has switched off data roaming. As this customer is identified to have a monthly subscription to a music streaming service, a related offer is triggered – for example buy a 1 day 50MB data roaming service pass, with free access to music streaming for €3.

2. The Success of Data Service Passes: 35% Increase in Data Roaming Revenues, 120000 Reduction in customer care calls per year, 98% Reduction in billing credit & adjustments

From the Informa industry survey mentioned in Part 1, the vast majority of the industry (71.4% overall, 83% operators) agrees that service passes represent a successful strategy to encourage subscribers to use data roaming services. Most importantly, different operators have successfully used them to increase data and roaming revenues.
An operator from the EMEA region achieved a 35% increase in data roaming revenue further to the introduction of data roaming service passes, within a very competitive marketplace, with a high number of frequent travellers who would use multiple SIM cards and devices for different countries they travel to – all this in order to avoid any bill shock.

Canadian operator Rogers used data passes to upsell data services to existing customers. As a result, within a couple of months, they converted 15% of their data pass users to a post-paid monthly data plan, they eliminated 98% of billing credits and adjustments that mostly went to compensating customers for unexpected charges, and they reduced the number of customer care calls by 120,000 per year. This is saving Rogers tens of millions of dollars whilst increasing customer satisfaction and average revenue per user. Further to this success, Rogers also launched data roaming passes.

These two examples show how effective service passes are in encouraging customers to adopt new services – whether data or data roaming – by removing all uncertainty around cost. Data roaming service passes enable operators to tap into the huge revenue opportunity that dormant roamers represent. The next question is then how to maximize this revenue potential by making it easier for subscribers to purchase.

3. Maximizing the Data Roaming Revenue Potential: On-Device Sales/Purchase

The industry view gathered from the above-mentioned survey is that the device itself via an app is the best channel for the sale of roaming packages and data service passes. By using the device as a sales and purchasing channel, operators maximize opportunities to upsell and get customers to buy as this can be done easily, anywhere and anytime; this not only maximizes the revenue potential for operators, but also generates unprecedented customer satisfaction.
It gives customers the freedom to purchase and activate the service they need, whenever and wherever they need it. This combined with real-time usage visibility on the device, through dashboards and alerts, represents the kind of experience that keeps customers loyal and make them feel comfortable and happy to spend.

These can easily be achieved by offering data roaming service passes (e.g. 30MB for a day) that can be purchased on the device and real-time usage dashboards and alerts. This is a simple and effective strategy for operators to secure data roaming revenues from existing customers as the upcoming 2014 EU regulation establishes a roaming marketplace: “From 1st July 2014, customers will be allowed to sign up for an alternative mobile roaming offer, separate from their contract for national mobile services, whilst using the same phone number.”

The idea is to upsell data roaming passes preferably before your customers leave, to send context-aware offers as previously mentioned, and enable on-device purchasing and real-time usage visibility. This is a winning strategy to secure loyalty from your customers and encourage them to use your data roaming services.

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