Today’s customers have a seemingly endless supply of information at their fingertips. Smartphones, for example, enable much faster access to brand, product and price-comparison information. As a result, companies in multiple industries are having difficulty attracting and retaining customers. Accenture’s 2011 global consumer survey shows that switching, or churn, is particularly high in the communications industry. Consumers in emerging markets are more likely to switch brands than those in mature markets.
The big problem for mobile carriers is the vast amount of detail about new behaviors is largely opaque to them. With voice usage, they could track call length, who’s calling whom and more, but the data sphere remains unknown terrain. Visibility into customer behavior is declining as the data sphere eclipses the voice sphere.
Opportunities are appearing due to the plethora of big data and advanced analytics. New tools provide detailed clickstream usage in real time by location. It’s as if an immense sphere of data has suddenly been removed from a dark shadow and exposed in the full detail to the light of day.
Operators hold a treasure trove of customer-behavior data, and there is gold in big data. Next-generation analytics can help mobile operators mine and refine the value of this new economic asset. The race is on to collect as many details as possible and mobile network operators are in a prime position to know the most.