Application to person
Perhaps the strongest wins from smart text services are likely to come in the area of application to person (A2P) services – and not always directly from the generation of new revenues. Cutting of operational expenditure can add just as emphatically to the bottom line as the creation of a new revenue stream. Customer care costs mobile operators millions. By providing automated text-based customer care services to subscribers, operators can take pressure off of call centres, while enabling phone users to self-service their commonly asked queries. Telefonica’s Movistar brand in Spain has been doing just this since 2005 when it deployed a natural language query engine with an SMS interface alongside IVRs and agents to handle an increasing range of routine ‘how do I’ queries. The solution lets people ask questions by text messaging in any language and idiom they choose, and responds instantly by text with appropriate answers. Text messaging enables phone users to get answers at any time and place they choose, with the added benefit that the answer to their query is saved on their handset for later reference.
In its latest release, the language engine supports quicker and easier creation of services that combine text and voice, and Movistar has been quick to exploit the new functionality with an application that automatically send subscribers a text message satisfaction survey immediately upon completion of a voice call with customer care agents. In addition to its customer care role, the solution also lets subscribers interact by text messaging with seasonal and rolling promotions, and the flagship Lend Me 4 Euros service which lets pre-pay phone users text for an instant balance top-up.
At sister company O2 UK, the same natural language text technology is giving millions of pre-pay customers self service control over O2 Rewards, the award-winning loyalty programme that gives free credit worth 10% of the previous quarter’s top-ups, up to a maximum value. Customers can either send a text message or make a voice call to the system – which automatically responds via their choice of channel. Through a common business back-end, it enables them to join the scheme, check their points balance, claim Reward talk time, or opt-out.
The success or otherwise of any new service depends to a large degree on how easily subscribers are able to understand and control it. There is a pivotal point in service discovery at which a subscriber typically behaves in one of two ways, either going on to become a regular user, or abandoning the service in frustration. Sympathetic service design clearly has a crucial role to play, but many subscribers will still need guiding through the setup process. A natural language text question and answer system of the type deployed by Movistar and O2 UK can do this, far more cost-effectively than a call centre, while helping to ensure maximum take-up.
The global volume of P2P text traffic was eight times that of A2P in 2009. That ratio can be confidently expected to change as the value of text interaction with subscribers becomes clearer for small to medium-sized businesses as well as banks, call centres, and brands. There is a tendency in the West to discount text in this context, but in countries where Internet access is poor, and smart handsets rare, text A2P applications are a practical route to reaching much of the population.
Social networking presents the mobile industry with a remarkable text-based opportunity. If operators want to be relegated to the role of dumb bit-pipes, they need only sit back and watch as social networking sites drive data volumes ever higher. However, with a low percentage of handsets globally having data access, and perhaps many millions of handset users around the world having no access to fixed line Internet, the market for A2P and P2A text access to social networking has huge potential. If they grasp the opportunity, operators are in prime position to monetise social networking in a way that other players in the field cannot.