What I am Hearing Part 1

So to kick off my series into what I am hearing from leaders of Customer Service for Communications Service Providers, I thought I would look at the concept and delivery of Offer Management.

Offer Management can take on many forms and ultimately can mean a slightly different thing to different people. Some people see Offer Management as a way to ensure the retention of unhappy customers and some people see it as a way to ensure the right package of service is offered to a potential new customer. Both are valuable uses of Offer Management and both are being actively explored today by Communication Service Providers.

There are really a number of pieces and parts to Offer Management and there are really only a few companies in the market that provide a holistic solution set in this space. IBM, Oracle and Amdocs are some of the big companies that are starting to piece together parts of this solution to round out an entire offering, but there are smaller niche players that are still going strong, such as an Exact Target.

The key to Offer Management, and the part that I am hearing more and more about, is the almost one to one offering that companies are moving to with the offers they give to customers. As companies are able to source more and more information about customer demographics and are able to paint a picture of their target or current customer that is more specific, you will start to see more targeted offerings. I have spoken with one company in the Service Provider space that is ultimately looking to have a One to One relationship with their targets that will create dynamic offers that are specific to that person and dynamic campaigns that will change based on the individual. With that desire, comes a number of challenges and concerns that we won't talk about here in terms of privacy. But, more and more companies will be trying to find ways to make the offers as compelling and complete as they possibly can.

As we start to see this progression and shift away from mass marketing to more of an individual based marketing, companies will need to ensure that they have the technology in place to manage offers based on different preferences as well as different delivery mechanisms to make the offer. This means that companies will need to invest in technology that allows them to make the best decisions about the offers and learn from those decisions that are made. We will talk more about this in another post and dig deeper into the intelligent nature of decisions.

Although this space is still maturing, it really is a core focus of just about every company I have talked with in the last 90 days.

Question is, how are you positioning to take advantage of this need? You don't have to be an IBM or Oracle to offer a solution to the need. You simply have to find a niche that will provide input to a company to help further refine the offer models.