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"Are you better?"

Rick Macy in his monthly column in the russian "Standard" as well as in "ComNews" (english translation). Published in March 2006.

For those of you who enjoy Russian telecoms as I do, you can't help but to be intrigued by the never-ending competition between the big cell phone companies, in particular, MTS and BEELINE (ok, I should call it Vimpelcom, but I like the new BEELINE logo so much, I will call them BEELINE for this article).

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So when running a mobile phone company, there are many things you have to get right operationally. For example, you have to build just the right amount of network infrastructure. But not too much, because then you will have spent too much money, but if you don't build enough, you could have poor service. Common sense stuff, but hard to get right sometimes.

Then when you built a good network, you have to worry about attracting and maintaining customers. So you have to sell to and then service these customers. And here is one place where BEELINE could be described as outperforming MTS. On the customer acquisition and service side.

And before you get excited, remember that it is not just price that attracts or maintains a customer. Think about when you made you decision to buy a cell phone. You may have thought about what your friends have, what cell phone looks trendy, where can you roam to? Etc. etc.

This part is very challenging. Why? Customers have choices. And each customer makes their choices based on their subjective perceptions. MTS and BEELINE have over 40,000,000 customers each. How can I know the perceptions of 40,000,000 customers?

So how can MTS improve their service for their over 40,000,000 mobile phone customers and retake the lead from the folks who like yellow and black? How does any large mobile phone operator attract and service profitable customers? The answer is... ...go ask the customer...

Of course, when you have over 40,000,000 of them, as MTS has, that is hard. So if you are a smart guy, you need to figure out a way to ask enough of them, so that their answers represent what the group thinks. ...

It would be great if you could correlate their answers in such a way to know what the answers mean. Finally, I have seen such a product that does this and does it well. No more crap marketing reports that few people read. The product is made in Germany, called Metrivox (www.metrinomics.com).

Anyway, to my mind, this Metrivox software is ideal for telecom operators who basically sell the same services every month to their customers. And now with the additional competition for intercity and international traffic, wouldn’t it be nice to know what your customers think of you? What they think your company does well? What they think your company does poorly? What they think of your products and services?

I saw this Metrivox demonstrated for Megafon recently. I was impressed. I wish I had had such a tool when I worked in PeterStar and Comstar. ...

Metrivox is really cool. You can even measure your customers’ perceptions of your phone company versus your competitors. Who do they think has a better network? Who do they think has a cooler brand? Who do they think offers more flexible tariffs? And perhaps a question that would be of some interest to MTS, what do they think of your service? And what is really interesting they can correlate these answers with the likelihood that your customer will leave and connect to another operator. Wow!

I have to say, I thought the product was magic when I saw it.

For example, I saw a Metrivox generated report about cellphone manufacturers (the software can measure anything that you can ask customers questions about. For those of you who have bought a Motorola’s RAZR, you were right, it is a cool cellphone, but its interface software still compares poorly to the interface software of Nokia and Samsung (God bless the Finns and the South Koreans). What was interesting was that this Metrivox program captured this and told them what they needed to fix. Will Motorola? They haven't yet, so I doubt they will. Of course Metrivox didn’t tell them how to fix the problem areas, but it was very clear to say what you needed to fix.

I saw another report that compared T-Mobile with E-Plus (two German cellphone operators). Customers reported that they thought T-Mobile had a better network, but that E-Plus had more flexible tariffs. And the software was able to correlate these answers with how likely customers are to ‘churn’ to another operator. That is something I think every telecom company would be interested in. What do you think? I am describing just the tip of the iceberg. The software is cool.

Recently, I have seen that MTS gives small chocolates in its customer service centers. Very tasty. Please, management of MTS, give the guy who thought that one up a raise. Those service centers can be depressing places with the oh so long lines of people. Then pick up the phone and call ThePractice (www.ThePractice.ru). They are the consultants who provide Metrivox in Russia. And you might want to do it soon, because those boys at Beeline probably already have. Did you hear that they increased their market capitalization by 52% not so long ago? Oh, that’s right, you probably did (see part one this article).

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