Gotransverse
on
Jan 08, 2020“Consumers expect a seamless content and communications experience across all platforms, so CSPs should work to serve as the single source for various services, including channels, apps, remote control services like Alexa, entertainment services like Apple TV, and more. Consumers seem to want all their online needs -- news, stocks, streaming, shopping, traffic, live video interactions, horoscopes, you name it -- delivered as a consolidated experience.”
Gotransverse CEO James Messer was recently featured in Forbes, discussing how consumer preferences — especially that Internet-enabled drive for instant gratification — are powering change in the way communication service providers approach their business. As consumers and technology both become more sophisticated, and as consumers’ choices continue to multiply in the growing marketplace, he says consumer-facing services have to step up their game if they want to maintain long-term customer relationships.
It’s time, says Messer, to rethink CSP service models.
“I believe the secret to CSPs’ future success,” he says, “will be segmenting offerings into discrete building blocks that customers can reassemble on the fly to create roll-your-own communications services.”
The vision is for a single provider to offer voice, video, data, streaming, text, chat, and collaboration tools so consumers can have all their online communication and entertainment needs consolidated into one platform. Strategic alliances will create value-added customer services, Messer says, and CSPs will offer special offers and retention packages in order to attract and keep new customers — all in service of instant gratification.
Messer points to several companies, including Starz Play Arabia and Xfinity, that are already experimenting with new models that include integrated services, better self-service portals and bundled or a la carte pricing to meet consumers’ preferences. These companies and others, he says, are already cross selling and upselling from their basic services, offering data, telephone or wireless services, to name a few.
Read Messer’s full article in Forbes.
But achieving that vision is not without its challenges, and key among them is turning these idyllic service bundles into profitable business lines. As it happens, creating and offering the bundles is the easy part — it’s determining how to charge for them that’s difficult.
“To track multiple pricing options, for example, you'll want to create more sophisticated back-end business processes,” says Messer. “Immediate and accurate billing is essential. To deliver accurate billing, you need to aggregate your associated costs, no matter what the service selection is, and calculate variables such as broadband costs, taxes, and licensing fees to provide accurate service fees.”
CSPs will also need to find ways to optimize customer care while keeping overhead and costs manageable. The self-service models, with sleek, easy-to-use customer interfaces will help, but working efficient, accurate billing into those models is yet another challenge.
The future of communication service providers is exciting, as they reach for new heights in convenience and connectivity. But the process of building ever-more-flexible subscription and usage models won’t be without challenges. Here at Gotransverse, we’re well-versed in helping evolving companies face those challenges. Our sophisticated billing platform and our commitment to helping clients build the foundations that power scale makes Gotransverse more than a vendor — we consider ourselves to be our clients’ trusted technology partners, as well.
If your CSP company is ready to evolve to meet (and exceed) consumers’ growing expectations, we invite you to learn more out more about Gotransverse’s platform and all the ways it can help launch and monetize new business models. Take a tour of the Gotransverse platform today, and call us to schedule your complimentary, personalized demo.