The Next Frontier of MVNO CX Personalization, Proactivity, and AI

The MVNO market is evolving rapidly and the MVNOs are facing high competition due to which they can no longer rely only on price differentiation to win and retain customers. Along with providing network and customised bundles, customer experience (CX) has also become the decisive factor and critical requirement to meet customer expectations.

MVNOs can focus on creating digital-first strategy and partner ecosystems to prioritize the adoption of digital channels for a personalized, and proactive customer engagement. By reimagining CX with AI, automation, and intuitive digital customer channel designs, MVNOs can move beyond being a connectivity provider to become a digital experience brand that drives customer engagement and loyalty.

This blog is a consolidation of real-world requirements which are gathered from operator interactions (MNO, MVNOs and MVNEs), highlighting some of the key customer experience requirements along with examples.

Personalized Push Notifications

Notifications are one of the key touch points to share information with customers. Traditionally most of the notifications are around areas like balance, recharge, payments, support ticket updates, product details etc, however by utilising the power of AI and customer data, MVNO can now categorize and generate the list of customers for sending personalised notifications. These notifications will not only enhance the customer experience but also contribute to delivering higher revenues for MVNOs, some of the personalised notifications examples includes:

• Notifying a prepaid users with an add-on data plan, while the user is streaming an OTT service to provide an un-interrupted streaming experience.
• Provide special roaming pack to frequent travellers once they land to their destination country.
• Provide a one-tap recharge option via wallet, card, or any other digital payment mode to the customer which is about to run out of balance.

These small but powerful customer interactions add lot of value and strengthen trust and convenience for the customers. The personalized notifications also drive upsell, reduce churn and ensures customers are engaged with MVNO brands daily.

Hyper-Personalized Offers

MVNOs often serve niche segments (youth, ethnic communities, Enterprise customers) and these customers have unique requirements which can be catered through personalized offers and products.

• Customers facing bill shocks can be notified and migrated to spending-cap plans.
• Hight data usage customers which are using data for video streaming or OTT can get bundled OTT subscriptions with add on data packs offers.
• Offer Data gifting, sharing and addon data pack options for friends and families which has uneven usage history.

Personalized offers which solve real pain points of customers not only increases revenue but also builds brand loyalty and trust.

Smart content and Campaign Management

MVNO’s has the flexibility to test and adapt campaigns quickly which creates a sharper and more personalized experience for the customers:

• A/B/n Testing method: MVNO’s can experiment with multiple campaign variants for example: targeting similar customer segment and comparing their responses for campaign related to “Addon Data bundle” vs. “OTT video pack” and determine which campaign drives better customer engagement and conversion.
• Holdouts: Exclude a small group of customers to measure true incremental change with campaign and to determine true campaign ROI.
• Segmentation: Categorize target customer by prepaid/postpaid, urban/rural, SOHO/ SMB.
• Adjust and optimize campaigns based on response trends even when the campaign is live.
• Use Gen-AI capabilities to generate content for campaign which aligns with MVNO brand style and identity.

Proactive customer care Journeys

Enhancing customer experience when a customer is facing any challenges with MVNO’s products or services can boost customer trust, reduce churn and create a perception of convenience among the customers, MVNOs can utilise digital channels, AI chatbots to create customer tickets, troubleshooting and resolving customer issues. Below are few functionalities which MVNOs can introduce in their care journey:

• Bulk ticketing: If a host-MNO outage affects a region, auto-raise tickets for impacted customers in the region and provide live updates on their ticket.
• Self-troubleshooting: Provide guided app flows and troubleshooting options for common issues like e-SIM activation, ticket creation, balance or recharge issues.
• Smart routing: Create workflows for prioritizing high-value customers or repeated issues directly to the support groups, senior agents or partner support team.

Intuitive Self-Care mobile and web Applications

For MVNOs, the self-care mobile and web application is often the primary customer channel. It should be designed to feel intuitive, helpful and act as a seamless digital assistant for the customers. The self-care apps should include following features:

• One-tap payments with stored wallets/cards options.
• Personalized add-on plans which surfaces on the app at the most relevant time for the customers.
• Personalized notifications for better plans, loyalty rewards, or expiring packs.
• Provide Omnichannel experience to the customer by letting customers to switch channels effortlessly, i.e. from app to chatbot, website, POS or partner stores.

MVNOs are also extending selfcare apps by bundling cross industry products like fintech, gaming, OTT, travel and creating a differentiation by going beyond connectivity products.

Additional tools which MVNOs can leverage to enhance customer experience

• AI Assistants: Assist customers for plan changes, payments, refunds, and troubleshooting rather than providing FAQs on selfcare app.
• Omnichannel Consistency: Remember customer previous interactions and context to avoid repeated explanation by customer across various channels.
• Loyalty Gamification: Create multi-level loyalty accumulation and redemption rules and reward customers not just on usage, but also for engagements (referrals, app logins, surveys).

Conclusion

MVNOs are moving from being a traditional telecom service providers to brands providing enhanced customer experience which feels personal, proactive and trusted among customers.

By leveraging CX tools like AI, personalized notifications, smart campaigns and proactive customer care, MVNO can build their brand loyalty and generate higher revenues.