“People will forget what you said. They will forget what you did. But they will never forget how you made them feel,” – Maya Angelou.
Customer is the Drive of Business Success
How people feel after using your product/service determines the future of your business. Indeed, the most crucial part is comprehending that the way you make your customers feel is the fundament of value creation. Without “customer success,” there is no meaning in crafting the value creation process. Why? Because customers drive your business towards success: no customer – no success. They should always be in the spotlight of the value creation process. Their feedback, level of satisfaction, wants and needs should direct you towards creating something close to their heart. Nick Mehta mentions, “The biggest barrier to customer success is CEOs not making it an important part of the culture.” So, let’s not be that CEO depriving the company of success; let’s be the one who attracts and maintains success in the company.
Mass Marketing Approach
Before, mass marketing had been the focus of companies. Products and services were imposed on customers through mass marketing, and it was the way to go. Companies just concentrated on the success that large customer segments brought to them while ignoring differences in niche demographics that personalized the product or service. At that time, businesses focused on the number of customers rather than the quality and satisfaction level of their target customers. Such an approach towards the business always resulted in the loss of customers and never crafting a loyal customer base. Such companies had short-term success, and it didn’t feel right.
Customized Marketing
Today, customers want to be heard and understood. This means that customers look forward to seeing that companies accurately take into account their needs, wants and expectations. Such a change in consumer minds shifted the mass marketing approach from the companies’ side and brought customized marketing to the stage. At this point, companies concentrate on customizing products and services to individual customers that need to be determined prior to the product/service launch.
Why is it Important to Create Value for Customers?
Buyer Persona Significance
These days businesses craft their buyer persona, which stands for the ideal customer profile. By understanding who the ideal customer is for the business, one gets the opportunity to deliver the product to its target audience and attach these people to the brand with a long-term objective. Thanks to buyer persona identification, companies craft a loyal customer base because these people see that the brand cares for their wants, needs and expectations. In short, customers see themselves at the center of the brand, which drives their desire to buy from that particular brand. With such an approach, success comes to the brand and stays with it for good. No matter how market trends shift, success never goes away if the brand keeps its ideal customer profile at the center of operations.
Besides, when a business identifies the ideal customer profile, its customer base never stops growing. The thing is that one ideal customer brings to the business others who fit the profile. Word of mouth works exceptionally well in the telecommunication industry. Plus, when the business knows who its ideal customer is, it always satisfies its ideal customer and never lets him or her go to the competitor. Keep in mind that competition is always tense, and companies ongoingly come up with ideas directed towards gaining competitors’ customers. Having the ideal customer profile identified, you will always be ahead of them no matter what competitors do.
What Do Customers Really Want from Telecom Companies?
Customer value creation is vital for every sphere; however, when the theme touches companies that interact with customers on a daily basis, it goes beyond any limitations. For such companies that mostly are telecommunication ones, being responsive, agile, and continuously innovative in the customer value creation process is crucial to their business success. Considering how fast-evolving the telecommunication industry is, it is logical that customer wants, needs and expectations change often. Such a frequent change forces a telecommunication company to ongoingly deliver customer value by giving decision-making power to the employees who are closest to the customers. This means that a top telecommunication company like Flagman Telecom should logically go for the empowerment and enable strategy within the company, which it currently does.
What telecommunication companies in California like Flagman Telecom thrive towards is reflecting the experiential, functional, and financial aspects of the product/service they provide to the customer. It is of utmost significance to accommodate the customer value creation process to three stages of the buyer journey, including pre-purchase, purchase, and post-purchase. Flagman always accounts for all three stages of the buyer journey to ensure that its customer expectations are met and beyond.
Another aspect that is crucial for companies like Flagman is ensuring that whatever is represented has validation and proof. Customers value everything that has research at its core. Information should be delivered to the customer in such a way that the customer feels it was specifically created for them and no one else. The company should always stick to the personalized approach towards customers to ongoingly succeed.
All the aspects mentioned above, including the proper distribution of decision-maker power among the employees, correct delivery of the product/service, and research-based representation are what customers love to see from the company. Indeed, what they demand exceptionally from a telecommunication company are price agility and network quality. When consumers are no longer satisfied with their current telecom provider, they automatically search for better alternatives among the competitors to get the best telecommunication services. Telecom providers should always stick to creativity and innovation regarding price and network quality to avoid losing a customer. By maintaining these two, a telecom company will never face the issue of restrategizing pricing and uplifting the quality of the network.
Flagman’s approach as the best telecommunication company personalizes the product and service it offers to the maximum possible extent. Not only did it find its niche – a specialization of a particular thing among a plethora of offerings – by providing the best VOIP phone service to the customers, but it also managed to fulfill the pain point of the customers. In short, it is a B2B2C telecommunication company that offers the following to meet customer expectations and beyond.
- Analyze each business’s phone needs
- Designing custom solutions for the business
- 24/7 customer support
- High-quality network and reliable service for 99.99% of the time
- Affordability
As you can see, everything Flagman Telecom offers is personalized, quality-insured, and affordable. Does it tackle price agility and network quality expectations of the customers? Absolutely!
The Process of Creating Customer Value
Crafting the proper process of creating customer value is complex due to immense competition in the telecommunication industry. So many things happen at once, including rising customer acquisition costs, leaving customers that look for a better deal, and many more. With such a structure of the industry and uncontrollable growth of the competitive market, each telecommunication company should have a niche. Besides, each one should think of a unique customer value management (CVM) system to gain the capability of measuring business success and maintaining a loyal customer base. Crafting such a system or plan is of utmost importance for a telecom company because it identifies the next best action and the most promising opportunity to target the customer at a needed time.
To craft the apt customer value management (CVM) system, a telecom company needs to concentrate on combining marketing and sales strategies, monitor customer payback periods, implement tailored customer rewards, and work on budget rebalancing. These can be defined as five levers that are categorized as payback period, budget rebalancing, tariff migration logic, tailored customer rewards, cross-selling and up-selling campaigns. Let’s go one by one, but keep it short to not overwhelm you with the new information.
- The payback period stands for the period of time that is required to recover the acquisition cost of each customer.
- The budget rebalancing stands for the allocation of the appropriate amount of budget to the most worthy implementation processes directed towards the customer rather than the market share.
- Tariff migration logic stands for controlling customers’ tariff availability plans to imprint within a contract what upgrades and downgrades are accessible for each customer based on the ARPU (Average Revenue Per User).
- Tailored customer rewards stand for the practice of making customers feel important within a particular telecommunication company due to credits that operators give out from time to time.
- Cross-selling and up-selling campaigns are necessary for enticing customers because each campaign is crafted based on a specific buyer persona profile to tackle customers’ individual traits and values and attract them to your telecommunication company.
The customer value management (CVM) plan or system should target and measure three main aspects.
- The proportion of the company’s effort to acquire new customers towards the actual customer acquisition cost
- The complexity of retaining already acquired customers
- The challenge of implementing necessary means to maintain and increase the value of already acquired customers
The Secrets of CVM in Telecom Industry
Compared to the past, CVM has failed in the telecommunication industry not once. Indeed, these days it works excellent, as today, the focus is on retaining customers rather than acquiring customers. However, the secret behind crafting a successful CVM system in the Telecom Industry is not enclosed in keeping customers. It’s deeper than that.
- Keep in mind that the primary secret of CVM in the telecommunication industry is encompassing the whole life cycle of customer journey within the customer value management (CVM) system to constantly monitor and revise strategies and tactics directed towards showing that the customer has exceptional value.
What companies always bypass is comprehending that departments of the company should not be separate from one another. Faulty construction of a strategy between departments always brings up the problem of bringing the plan and the company down rather than up.
- Keep in mind that another secret of CVM for a telecom company is crafting the strategy by taking into account how important it is to connect departments with one another to drive the plan and the company up.
And lastly, it is of utmost importance to stand out in such a competitive industry and focus on targeting the entire life cycle of your customer through the CVM system solely with tactics that fit your niche.
- Keep in mind that your company will drown in the ocean of similar and dull companies without a niche. Take Flagman Telecom as an example; it positions itself as the top telecommunication company delivering VOIP Phone Service for its customers to enjoy unlimited nationwide calling. When you enter their website, it gets imprinted in your mind that Flagman Telecom specializes in VOIP Phone services.
Final Note
If your company thrives in the telecommunication industry – one of the most competitive industries available, then ensure that the criteria uncovered above are present within it. Success will come to you when customer value creation is done in its best possible manner. It would be nice to keep in mind Flagman Telecom as an example of a telecom company because it already has the experience of crafting exceptional value for its customers, and you can get a lot of insights from it by exploring its history while following its progression.
