Inbound Marketing for Unstoppable CVM Growth

Amit: [00:00:00:04] CVM is the way forward because competition can copy your products in a day’s time, execution cannot be copied. That is your people, your resources, and how passionately you do certain things. Your high value customer and high profile customers are two different sets. I just elaborate it a little.

Exacaster: [00:00:21:14] Welcome to CVM Stories, the podcast on customer value management. Together, we explore how companies can be more successful and their customers happier through the use of latest customer value management techniques. Learn key commercial and analytical insights from telecoms, retail, finance and other industries that drive CVM forward.

Egidijus: [00:00:40:04] Hi, I’m your host, Egidijus. Today our guest is Amit Khanna, a visionary marketer who has worked in CVM roles across many countries including India, Tanzania, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, South Africa and more. He will share his secrets on how to build a successful inbound marketing strategy. So let’s dive in. Amit, thank you for joining us today. It’s a pleasure to have you here, Amit. I have had a lot of, um, um, guests who have like 20 years experience in telco marketing, etc. but I have never had a person who works in CVM and who did CVM in like five different countries like India, Dubai, uh, Abu Dhabi, South Africa. And, uh, wow.

Amit: [00:01:43:18] I’m here. Yeah, I worked in Iraq as well. So no, but thank you for having me for this conversation. Uh, see, I worked in different continents, as you rightly said. Uh, I worked in different places, And luckily that, you know, I got an opportunity to launch CVM in some of the places. So I’m glad that, you know, I was part of those teams and create some sort of a success story right during during my tenure.

Egidijus: [00:02:11:04] So what would be your insights like? How CVM challenges are the same and different through different countries? You know.

Amit: [00:02:20:04] See, I would say it’s different because customer behavior is different. The the psychology is very different. But at the end of the day, it also depends that, you know, whether you are a challenger operator or you are you are in a leadership position. So if you are in a leadership position, you have a great network. I think there is a different strategy for us to engage with customers. Customers see you differently, but if you are a challenger again, I see as a CVM there is an opportunity. There is always an opportunity for a CVM team to engage with our customers. So yeah, different places, different challenges. But it’s exciting.

Egidijus: [00:02:58:17] Okay. I thought that you will answer. You know, CVM is everywhere the same. But it’s not.

Amit: [00:03:06:01] No it’s not no different.

Amit: [00:03:10:03] You cannot replicate, you know, things that you have done it in, in different places. Yes. You can bring your thought process right together, but you need to acclimatize also yourself with the atmosphere, with the culture of the organization. I think the culture of the place, like if you look at now my current location, like I’m in Abidjan, it’s a French speaking country. Everyone speaks French. Yes, I worked in Arabic speaking countries as well, but here French is quite dominating. So everything is in French. The mindset is a bit different. So then accordingly you know you need to, you need to maintain the pace and you need to work along with them into this journey.

Egidijus: [00:03:56:10] Okay, that that perfectly makes sense. Uh, Amit, uh, when we talked with you the first time, you said that kind of. And I asked, uh, what is your passion? You know, in CVM? And you instantly mentioned inbound marketing, and we haven’t covered this topic yet. Yeah. So I want to deep dive today into this topic and ask you, like, 1000 different questions. But before we dive deep, um, and my first question is, uh, what is the difference between inbound marketing and outbound marketing and how do they work together? Because kind of for me, it seems they are very different. Uh, I would like to hear your perspective on that.

Amit: [00:04:47:10] Okay. So now thanks for for this question. Right. See the way I look at this one? First we will talk about let’s talk about the outbound marketing. See outbound marketing. To me it’s a very traditional way of doing or reaching out to our customers. It’s a very old school that, you know, we are sending messages to customers and we expect them to react in terms of our, our offerings. But if you look at the the with the pace, uh, in which, you know, the customers interact, I would say inbound gives a flexibility to the customers to, to interact with the operator. So to me, the inbound marketing is all about creating personalization and seamless customer experience. So I would say it’s a it’s a big difference when it comes to inbound and outbound. On inbound there are different channels we can talk about. You know, these days in more mature markets, people talk about, you know, mobile application. They in the digital world, people are more hooked on the mobile application rather than using the old traditional SMS. This is where I see the difference between inbound and outbound marketing.

Egidijus: [00:05:58:04] And here I struggle with some definitions. If you can help me. Okay. And when we talk about outbound, uh, kind of we say, okay, this is kind of upsell campaign. And we and every activity we usually call a campaign, you know, we send something to the customers, expect some conversions and so on. And from the inbound perspective, we do a lot of activities. But how can we call them. Are they still campaigns or are they something else. You know.

Amit: [00:06:28:21] Correct. So see when it comes to the outbound marketing, right. See we decide when to target customers without even knowing, you know, the customer psyche as well. Is it something customers can afford. Because see people cannot afford throughout the throughout the month. Right. They there is a specific time of the month when people shop around for their mobile needs. But when it comes to inbound marketing. Inbound marketing is a kind of a destination that we have, that we create for customers where they can actually shop. It’s like, you know, you’re visiting a mall, you’re visiting a place, and you are giving customer a choice, right? Or it’s a kind of a, you know, when you go for a buffet, there is you always have the preferences, right, in terms of, you know, what to eat, when to eat and what, uh, not not to eat when it comes to a buffet. Right. So we are giving in in the inbound. We are giving customer a choice to choose. You know what? Whatever they like in terms of, you know, their, their needs, the mobile needs.

Egidijus: [00:07:32:04] So it’s more like being always ready to, uh, serve the customer with whatever need customer has at that moment. Or is it, uh, close to your definition?

Amit: [00:07:48:04] So, see, uh, we should always, uh, you know, have different type of propositions. It all depends upon the company strategy. It depends upon the customer need as well. If the company strategy is to increase, I would say the data penetration, because data is the growth engine for most of the telecom operators these days. Right. Everybody wants to be digitally connected, right, with our customers as well as that, you know, increase the data consumption. Now the opportunity is that, you know, on the inbound, right, you can place multiple offers. You can place, you know, multiple products. Depends that you know how you will design it. And but when it comes to outbound outbound there is a limit that, you know, we can send probably one message or two messages in a day, but at times it’s very annoying as well. Your high value customers don’t want to contact you more often. So hence I would say inbound is much more flexible and much more meaningful compared to the outbound marketing.

Egidijus: [00:08:55:12] Mhm. So uh, I think let’s uh talk a bit about how to create this amazing inbound marketing experience. So uh, most of the telcos have many inbound channels from customer service, point of sale, USSD mobile app. It’s how do you build this inbound experience in all these channels.

Amit: [00:09:23:14] See this is very interesting right. Okay. Now you know as a marketer right. The way I look at things, you know, there are technically five pillars to build, uh, you know, a proper inbound solution or we can call it proper inbound platform for, for our customers to shop around. Number one, uh, as we always talk about that, you know, analytics is key, right? When we talk about CVM, we cannot do CVM without proper analytics. Now, if you look at, uh, the as an operator, it depends upon the maturity of the operator. There are operators who are only into the Cebu business, which is consumer business unit. There are who are into enterprise business as well. Uh, there are operators which which also have they also have, you know, the fintech solution. But at the end of the day, right. It’s one market, right? And it’s the same customer. Right. Who’s buying your different products and propositions. So for me, uh, it’s very important that, you know, we collect all the information into, into one place and we analyze customer behavior. Right? We look at, you know, the, the different stages of the customer life cycle as well and then act accordingly. So bringing information together from different. Uh, I would say business units is the key. Some places we call it recommendation engine. There are other places we call it decision engine. Right. But it’s very important that, you know, our data is complete. Data is accurate. So that, you know, we can actually provide the best possible, uh, I would say the products and the services to our consumers.

Egidijus: [00:11:10:06] Mhm.

Egidijus: [00:11:11:17] And from the data and analytics perspective, what are the key aspects you would say that are most important? Uh, to take in, in mind when building this inbound.

Amit: [00:11:25:09] Okay.

Amit: [00:11:26:01] See collecting our data points from various business units such as consumer enterprise, fintech, digital are the initial step, in creating the analytical layer for a telecom company or a telecom operator. We need to develop a comprehensive plan to capitalize on the various business opportunities. And, you know, I adhere to a rule which is 80 over 20. Your 20% consumers generate 80% of the revenue. And we as a CVM experts at CVM people, we believe that, you know, there is still an opportunity lying with the 80% of the consumers, right, because they just contribute 20% to the business. And I’m sure when we talk about these consumers, are they with competition or they are elsewhere. So how can we entice those customers? First of all, to understand, you know, the the behavior of the customer, the need of the customer. And this can be done through a proper analytics. So if you can identify additional, uh, I used to say that, you know, additional 5% opportunity in our business. I think that would be a big contribution to the overall, uh, overall enterprise or to the overall telecom operator.

Egidijus: [00:12:45:03] So you basically search for the data points that would signal, uh, the opportunity for growth. Yeah. Mhm. Okay. So, uh, what are other components besides besides the data and analytical engine.

Amit: [00:13:00:06] So see uh, we spoke about data. I think we can go further deep into data. Uh, it’s not about that. You know, we just need to look at customer behavior, but we also need to look at, uh, you know, the, uh, the other opportunities as well. We need to look at the potential of a customer. Is there a way that, you know, we can actually identify that customer is a single SIM user or is a dual SIM user, right. There are ways that, you know, we can actually find an opportunity, right? And ensure that, you know, if there is a wallet share, how can we improve our share of wallet with competition? So if if the total spend, uh, as a consumer is $100, right. As a consumer, there are chances that, you know, consumer is using two different SIM cards. And with us, the consumer is only spending 30, and the remainder 70 is being spent with the another operator. How can we ensure that, you know, we can shift the usage, right, or the consumption from the other operator to us? And there are ways there are, uh, I would say analytical tools. There are people in the market, right, who can analyze it and, you know, identify those set of customers. Uh, that can be done. Now, your question is more toward that, you know, what are the other components? So analytics for me is the key is the is the starting point is the foundation for for anything that we do as a, as a CVM unit.

Amit: [00:14:29:09] The another one. Uh, depends upon the different, uh, enterprises within the organization. Right. We also need to look at that, you know, what do we have to offer to our customers? What are the different, you know, value propositions that we have right within the enterprise and that we can actually offer to the customers? Right. What is industry doing? Right. We cannot ignore industry. We need to look at that. You know, what is other mobile operators doing to engage our customers. It could be device deal at times. You know, in some of the mature markets I have seen that, you know, people are more interested buying uh, a product with a device. Then they stay hooked on, uh, with the operator for a couple of years because they are more excited. Uh, they pay less on a monthly basis, but they get, uh, you know, the services as well as they get some fancy device as well. Right. So that is the second part. Right. In terms of, uh, the I’m talking about. Precisely. You know, how can we ensure there is a proper, you know, offer catalog, right. Uh, when I’m talking about the offer catalog, I’m emphasizing more towards creating different offers from different enterprises. It could be a fintech business. It could be an enterprise business or a consumer business. So that is also important. Do you want me to touch on other components as well?

Egidijus: [00:15:56:12] Uh, yeah. I think uh, maybe let’s go through the, uh, all components that you have in mind and then, uh, we will dive deep into, uh, each of those, uh, later so that we will have the full framework in our mind.

Amit: [00:16:13:23] See the another one, uh, the the third pillar that I’m talking about that is related to contextual marketing. It’s very important that, you know, when we will target our consumers. It’s very important. Uh, it depends upon the time of the week. Uh, time of the day. Right. And we should always target our consumers when they are having some sort of an activity with us when they are engaging with us. So if I would know that, you know, you and me are on a mobile call and you terminate the call just after terminating the call, there is an opportunity for a CVM team, right, to promote something, because I know that, you know, maybe two minutes ago. Right. You are with your mobile, you are using your mobile. So we call it contextual marketing. If you are using, say for example, you’re you’re watching something on YouTube and we see that, you know, your data got exhausted. You you burned your data, the bundle that you had, and you just left with 20% of the of the bundle, which is left. Now, again, there is an opportunity for us to upsell Sell something right as a consumer, so that we call it more of a contextual marketing. If you or if there is a customer who is engaging with us on an app, there are notifications these days in the system that, you know, uh, we can actually use it. And as and when the customer is using our app for, there is an opportunity for us to pop up a message on the app itself so that, you know, it’s we can make it more relevant right when it comes to. So contextual marketing again, is the key when it comes to reaching out to our customers or approaching our customers.

Egidijus: [00:18:01:21] Amit, could you give some examples of let’s say, triggers or the context elements that you saw work like magic, but they were not obvious, you know, because kind of end of balance or end of data bucket, these are the obvious that everybody use, you know. But uh, spoiler some secrets, you know. Hear.

Amit: [00:18:25:06] See. So we can talk about few, right? I think, again, if I’m going back in in history. Right. We used to use end of call notification. So I gave you an example on mobile termination. When the call is terminated, there is an opportunity for us to sell a voice pack to a customer because the customer is using voice. But data again we can talk about data, right? If somebody is say for example, watching maybe a football game right on on YouTube or maybe on a live TV, and the customer consumes the entire data or reaches a different threshold right to the pack. Right? Because we create some sort of a thresholds as and when the consumer reaches 80% of the of the threshold. Is there an opportunity for the CVM team, right, to promote something? So what do we do is because this is all linked. Uh, here. So, see, we spoke about, you know, the algorithm. We spoke about the decision engine for me, the brain and the work that we have done in terms of analytics. It’s already sitting over there. Right? We have already done, you know, our analysis.

Amit: [00:19:39:09] Now, what we see is that, you know, this customer is using a data right data as a service. And he has exhausted 80% of it. There is an opportunity for us to use a real time trigger, real time marketing trigger and link it back with the analytics and see what offer is mapped to the customer. Right. And push that offer to the consumer, right. Whatever is placed on the on that one. So we don’t need to reinvent the wheel because analytics is being done right. We with different I would say Slices and dices. We have already reached to a point that, you know, these are the 2 or 3 different, I would say, proposition that customer might be interested in. So algorithm is done. Offer catalog is being created. Now I am coming to the contextual marketing as and when the customer is engaging with us, there is an opportunity for us right to to reach out to the customer at the right time. Because timing is also important here. So this is where I’m actually going with the contextual marketing.

Egidijus: [00:20:50:08] So do I understand correctly that from analytics perspective and the kind of offer catalog and context, you basically treat this as a build those at once, meaning for example, if you have uh, the data context, meaning customers may run out of data balance and the package might expire, etcetera. Yeah. For all these contexts, you build the algorithms that are kind of have the recommendations already in place, and you are just waiting until the customer falls into specific context to kind of communicate this offer.

Amit: [00:21:32:06] You are right. Because, see, consumer behavior is not changing overnight. It takes time. We have already considered a consumer behavior in our analytics, right? In terms of, you know, when the consumer engage with the mobile operator, like, you know, how does it and how does the customer engage and what different type of products the customer might be interested in. So what do we do with the offer catalog? When we talk about the offer catalog, we try to place offers that customer might be interested in. But at the same time, since it is an inbound, its customer is approaching, or I would say reaching out to us as as per his or her convenience. Right. Because it’s an inbound platform, it could be. It could be USSD. It could be a mobile app. And consumer can maybe, you know, browse our offers, maybe at midnight. Right. We are giving, you know, that kind of a flexibility to the consumer. So that’s why I’m saying that, you know, it’s a kind of a destination that we create where the customer can actually see all the personalized offers, right, which is tailor made or tailor made for them. Right. So yeah. So I think just to respond to your question that, you know, everything is being done, we are just trying to contextualize it. When to target customers with an offer.

Egidijus: [00:22:57:08] Okay.

Egidijus: [00:22:58:05] Are there other elements in the framework.

Amit: [00:23:02:06] Yeah. So see then the the next one again that is that is my favorite as well in terms of, uh, you know, different channels. Okay. Now, when we talk about channels, what do we mean by channels here. So yes, we talk about USSD. It depends that you know, you are in in the emerging markets. You are in the more mature market. Right. Uh, what works in, in in those specific markets. Right. I will give you an example of Canada. Canada is more mature market. Uh, I have seen people using mobile application, mostly mobile application. Majority of the customers are on application. But when it comes to, uh, Africa or. Yeah, Africa, you can take an example of Africa, Africa. Right now large part of customers are on USSD. Right. Again it’s an inbound platform. Yes. We are maturing towards taking our customers to the application as well. So channel also plays a very important role. But when it comes to channel I just wanted to highlight a few more things here. So yes, at times, you know, when we launch a product, we try to create a separate channel for a customer, right? And then we start pushing those offers and promotion on that particular channel.

Amit: [00:24:25:07] My recommendation is let’s see that you know where the customers are to which different channels they interact most with us as an operator, it could be a fintech solution that, you know, every day, our X million customers, you know, try to check things on fintech. There is an opportunity for us that, you know, to place an offer on the fintech platform, and you create a link through an API right link between fintech and the consumer business so that, you know, we don’t need to, so we don’t need to confuse customers. It’s all the back end activity that we will do, but the the brain will sit with the analytical tool. The offer mapping is done. Now what is important is that you know where we will place our offers. It could be application as well, mobile application as well. So I’m saying we call it that. You know we should do fishing with the fishes are. So I would say place your offers personalized offers at a place where you will see the maximum traffic when it comes to, you know, your consumers.

Egidijus: [00:25:37:22] And how do you make a call which are the most important, uh, channels. So maybe number one is like a predefined based on market, but what is number two. And number three.

Amit: [00:25:51:07] Okay. So that’s a very good one right. So we we can actually bring in the channel analytics as well. We can profile our consumers seeing that you know which one is their favorite channel. Right. When I interact with our consumer or when the consumer interacts with us when they buy products and services, do they buy services from a USD or they buy offers from a from a mobile application? My recommendation is to place your offers on the same channel right from the where they buy their offers. Let’s not try to divert customer from one channel to the other. We want our customers to enjoy our services. So are you understood? Right I think we yeah.

Egidijus: [00:26:40:04] So. So you you don’t recommend to change customers behavior because changing the behavior is a painful operation.

Egidijus: [00:26:47:03] Yeah it is.

Amit: [00:26:49:03] It is. This is what my learning is in terms of channel analytics. Right. We have done it in a couple of places. Right. But it all depends upon the maturity of the operation. Right. If the if the CVM team is mature. Right. We have all the pieces of the puzzle at one place, right? Then we can think about, you know, creating more opportunities and how can we, you know, act more maturely with the operator or as an operator, if I put it that way?

Egidijus: [00:27:17:16] I think it’s clear. And you said you have five. So you mentioned for now, uh, like, uh, analytics software catalog, contextual marketing channels. And?

[00:27:29:11] And the last. One that is internal for us in terms of performance, measuring anything that we that we do, if we can actually analyze it, I think that would be really good. Right. It’s important. It’s pivotal, right. That anything that we do as a CVM function, is it profitable for us or not? It’s it’s very important for us to measure right on a regular intervals. So to me. Right. And I’m sure for uh, as a marketer as well, it’s very important for us to understand that, you know, what is working for us, what is not working for us? So this is how I see, uh, you know, the measurement is the key when it comes to a CVM function.

Egidijus: [00:28:11:15] Mhm.

Amit: [00:28:12:04] So these are the five pillars that you know that I have touched upon. Right. When it comes to uh, the, the overall, you know, the inbound solution.

Exacaster: [00:28:22:05] If you are interested in customer value management check out our customer value Management body of knowledge. CVM blog is a comprehensive guide for CVM professionals offering tips, tools, and best practices to help you in your job. Visit CVMBoK.com for more.

Egidijus: [00:28:38:22] And I have several extremely painful questions if you are ready to answer them. So many telcos, uh, suffer from omnichannel marketing. Kind of. It’s very difficult to do a proper omnichannel. Yeah. So so we have, uh, we identified which channels customer prefer. Customer comes into one channel and everything is fine if customer comes only to a single channel. But when the outbound marketing kicks in and the customer comes into two channels, then all sorts of problems happen. So my question is, how do you solve the issue when, you know, uh, you push a campaign to telemarketing, which is calling the customer and offering something, but at the same time, customer just dropped into the store and already purchased a new device. And ten minutes later, the telemarketing is calling you with the same offer. You know.

Amit: [00:29:52:18] So, you know, this is very.

Egidijus: [00:29:53:18] How do you solve that?

Amit: [00:29:54:21] Yeah.

Amit: [00:29:55:09] So again, this is very interesting. See, uh, when you’re talking about the omnichannel experience. Right. So there is omnichannel. There is multi-channel. But your question is that, you know, Amit, what’s happening in the market is that, you know, we send a message to a customer, but our other touchpoints are not aware about that offer that we are talking about. Okay. Yes. So what we have done in some of the places, I might not be 100% accurate in my response, but what we have done in other places that, you know, we created a view, right, especially for all our touchpoints that, you know, if we send a communication to our customers, they would see in one of their CRM tools that, you know, these are the communication sent to the customer. These are the active offers for the consumer. And you know, this is what the consumer can buy. Same thing that we spoke about, you know, earlier in terms of channel CRM tool or our touchpoint is one of the, I would say important channel. See, anybody who is visiting our store is just an example. Anybody who is contacting us at our contact center is a big opportunity for us to provide the best available services and to provide the best available products that we might have. So I think this is what I can what I can say. So creative view, which is uh, I would say uniform across the channel create create that view. Yeah. So the same offer probably can sit on your SSD. It can sit on, on the, on the app. Maybe the other touch points that if you if you do in visit store you contact the call center. Everybody should have the similar offer or the same offer actually.

Egidijus: [00:31:44:08] From your experience because you worked in a now probably six different telcos or seven from what I remember, maybe seven. Um, have you seen, um, let’s say a team which was able to solve that. You know, all the offers would be updated in real time and all the channels are like 100% aligned and so on. You know, if you go to the web and purchase something, the offer is automatically eliminated from telemarketing, and telemarketing stops calling with those offers. And, you know, the email follow up comes that there’s no offers, no no longer available, etc.. Have you seen this implemented to, you know, top, top, top level or or it is a struggle for, for for the teams.

Amit: [00:32:35:15] So I had this, uh, I would say challenge in one of my operators. What we have seen is that, you know, we were updating our offers very frequently, right. It was getting updated almost every day. And then we put or I would say place certain rules that you know if your recharge balance is less than X dollars, that you know, we will place this offer. And if your balance is more than X dollars, it’s a different offer. So I will tell you the challenge that we had. Right. I think it’s on the same line that you are talking about. The consumers saw the offer before recharging, right? And they see the offer on the USSD on the app. And customer is interested now to buy this offer. Hence customer, you know, recharge with one of the one of the digital channels. The moment customer recharge the offer disappeared because we changed the rule, right? The offer disappeared. And this shows the the kind of, you know, the transparency. So what we did in that case, we decided not to change our offers more often. Right. We decided to change offers on a weekly basis, at times on a monthly basis. It depends upon the type of the offer that we will promote to the consumers because, as I said, consumer behaviour is not changing every day. It takes some time. So why are we changing our offers every day? And if you see that, you know, consumer bought a weekly bundle and next day morning we change the offer. Does it make any relevance? It does not make any any any relevance. Right. So what is important is we need to look at the potential of a consumer. You know, what is his his or her maximum appetite on the, on the mobile spend. And we cannot keep on stretching customers right every day. So yeah. So disappearing offers. We have experienced it. We fixed it. And then again we saw that, you know, our revenue started, you know, moving up. So that was the that was quite promising and quite positive.

Egidijus: [00:34:50:08] So I totally buy this part of, you know, when customer stops understanding what is happening. I just had an offer. Now it’s gone. You know what’s happening. You know, with that part, what are important aspects from customer experience point of view? Uh, for example, I don’t know. Customer opens the app, customer sees that he doesn’t like this offer, he wants to dismiss it, etc. kind of, uh, how do you build this experience there? It’s like, uh, are there other aspects when customers express that they don’t want to buy something, etc.?

Amit: [00:35:31:09] This is again, a very good question, right? I have experienced this thing personally, uh, with one of the operators in UAE, which is Dubai, and what we have seen is that, you know, my, my visitors, the number of visitors, uh, to my, my platform is say, for example, uh, you know, around 20 million, right? The 20 million. But the people who are responding to the offer is, is way less than, you know, 20 million is less than 50%. So the question is that, you know, consumers are visiting us. They they might not be liking our offers. So people who are not buying the offers, but visiting us regularly, we build an assumption that, you know, probably we need to promote something different for the consumer, you know, at times. And it’s this is a very important one. And I always give this example, uh, you know, to my teams as well. See, behavior is one it’s very important. But we also need to look at, you know, the profile of the customer as well. And I will give you maybe a couple of examples and one of my example is that, you know, if you look at, you know, the the consumers who are using, uh, I would say the, the fancy devices.

Amit: [00:36:54:04] Right. It could be an iPhone, it could be an expensive Samsung Samsung phone, but their consumption is very low. They use maybe 200 megs of data, 200MB of data. But why is it so? I think we need to understand that, you know, why are they using less? See, the conversation here is they are using less because they are using Wi-Fi. They are they have alternatives. They they use Wi-Fi. They use competition services to use services. So if somebody is using maybe a $2,000 a device, and if we are promoting only basis customer behavior with us, which is only the usage usage part, maybe we are not able to understand our consumer properly. So that particular customer, if we can actually have something, maybe a $20 $30 offer rather than promoting it, 1 or $2, right? $2,030 and give something exciting. Give them maybe five GB data, ten GB data. Right. So we need to understand right. So this can only be done through proper analytics. I think the point that you’re making I have experienced it but again with a different operator. Right. So I hope I’ve answered your, uh, question.

Egidijus: [00:38:16:03] Um, uh, yeah. I, uh I think you answered it, uh, like, uh, in an unexpected way. Uh, because, uh, kind of, uh, what I take out of of you, it’s like, okay, you need you really need to react on how customer is reacting to your offers. From one perspective. And then dig really deep of why don’t they, for example, buy something if the context shows otherwise, you know, if the context shows that if you have a really good device, you kind of you should use a tremendous amount of data. Yeah. And it’s not happening. So, uh, so I think it’s a very interesting insight.

Amit: [00:39:04:20] So we do market research as well. There are so many ways to do it. Uh, I was just sharing my experience. You know, how I felt, right when we, we worked with one of the operators in Middle East.

Egidijus: [00:39:16:18] Are there any other aspects in the inbound marketing space where, uh, which we did not cover, that you would say, uh, we need to put this in, you know, for for people to learn about it.

Amit: [00:39:31:14] Yeah. So, see, the way I look at, uh, you know, CVM, right? To me, CVM is the way forward because the margins are very slim, right? As an operator, the margins are very slim. Competition can copy your products and services. I would say in a, in a in a day’s time, I think which is very important is execution. Execution cannot be copied. That is your people, your resources and how you you know, how passionately you do certain things. Okay. I think one of my experience is, and I told you about the 8020 rule, the 80% consumer only contribute 20% of the revenue. Is there a way that, you know, we reach out to our customer or contact our customers on the ATL platform as well? When I’m talking about ATL, I’m talking about the channels which are meant for for selling open market offers. And is there a way we can actually try to tailor made, you know, our offers only for those customers that you know who who are, whose contribution is way too less as compared to the to the rest of the base. Right? So there are ways to do it, right? We I have done it with two operators so far. Right. And we have really seen good results. The, the whole idea is so.

Egidijus: [00:40:58:21] The question how.

Amit: [00:41:02:07] Yeah. So this is.

Amit: [00:41:03:18] What. See again it’s going back to the analytics. Right. When I’m talking about the inbound platform one platform I’m talking about dedicated right from a CDM purpose. Right. You create a USSD code, you create a I would say you create a space in your mobile app where you will sell your, you know, personalized offers. But at the same time, what I mentioned earlier as well that, you know, there are consumers who are already interacting with us and that is on your ETL platform. I’m talking about different USSD code, if I will put it, you know, in a very precise way, right. So if there is a, there is a specific USSD code which is meant for your open market offers, how can we ensure all those customers whose contribution to the overall business is less? How can we, you know, place a tailor made personalized offer for customers at the at the, at the, at the top right for those consumers. And I have seen it working right. Again, we are not expecting the entire base to react. We are just expecting 5% of the consumers to react. And how can we ensure that, you know, we scale gradually this approach, we analyze it, we test it, and then again, you know, we scale it.

Egidijus: [00:42:23:16] As I understand, this kind of 80% of those customers, you know, you need to change their behavior. And as we mentioned in the beginning, the change of behavior is very slow in general. Yeah.

Amit: [00:42:37:04] Yes. This is what my experience is, right? Uh, behavior won’t change overnight, right? If somebody is using an iPhone device, he’s using an iPhone device. Right. They won’t change, you know, to a Samsung overnight, right? It will take some time.

Egidijus: [00:42:51:07] Uh, there’s nothing that would make me change. Iphone, uh, device.

Amit: [00:42:56:20] Exactly. Right. So.

Amit: [00:42:59:07] Because iPhone users are the iOS users, they hook on, they hooked on to iOS for some time. Android people love Android. They they stay hooked on Android. Right. And depend that, you know, you’re using, uh, low end device. High end device. Right. High end consumers only use the high end phones. So it’s a consumer behavior. You know, one important thing, since we are talking, right, your high value customer and high profile customers are two different sets. And I just elaborate it a little. It depends, you know. Uh, I can give you an example. Right. Uh, in terms of, say, for example, there’s an Uber services, right? And you write that, you know, the Uber, Uber drivers, they use mobile phone more often. But are those customers high value consumers or they’re high profile customers. So we need to differentiate it. Right. And and we need to see that, you know, it’s not necessarily that, you know, the high value customers are your high profile customers. They’re two different things. So I think if you can classify that as well into our segmentation, that would also help. But it depends upon the maturity of your data. Right. The the data that you have been using it right for your analytics. Mhm.

Egidijus: [00:44:19:19] Okay. I mean everything sounds really inspiring and exciting.

Amit: [00:44:27:15] I hope I’ve answered. Most of your questions.

Egidijus: [00:44:31:03] Uh, yeah. It’s like, uh, it’s very interesting. And, uh, some of the answers were very unexpected for me. So it’s, uh, really, really interesting. And I learned a lot through throughout the inbound marketing part. But I still have three questions for you that we ask, uh, uh, every every guest. So you have a very rich career, and, uh, could you share your proudest moment of your career with us?

Amit: [00:45:03:20] Okay. See, there are times that, you know. Okay. I started my career from India. India was a more mature market. Maybe when I started. You cannot move the needle right when it comes to, you know, entering into a more mature market. But I remember when I traveled, uh, to, to to Tanzania. That was my first assignment. And during that time that, you know, the changes that we deployed, right. And especially, you know, in a foreign land after, you know, working x number of years in India, working in Tanzania, which is very different for me since it was my first assignment. And a very little things that we did in Tanzania really helped us, you know, improving business from by around 20% in just couple of months time. Oh yeah.

Amit: [00:45:59:07] That, got recognized, uh, you know, at a, at a group level in, in a Etisalat Group. And then they invited us, uh, you know, to work, for them in, in the group office. So this is how, you know, the transition happened, right? For me working in an opco. Right. And moving to a group role, that is one thing which I’m very proud of, uh, you know, for my career. There are other examples as well, right? I think I hope.

Egidijus: [00:46:29:11] You got a good bonus for for improving the business by 20%, you know. Yeah.

Amit: [00:46:35:03] See, my bonus was.

Amit: [00:46:36:05] That, you know, moving from, from India to Tanzania and from Tanzania to Middle East. Right. So I spent some time in Middle East. It’s a very different experience. Right. Working working for them. So yeah, it was very exciting. Right. So I’m I’m being very I feel proud. I think some of the things that we have done in the past few years.

Egidijus: [00:46:59:02] At the same time, you know, next to those proud moments, uh, every customer value manager has its, uh, failure times. Um, could you share your horror story? You know.

Amit: [00:47:15:00] Uh, when you’re talking the horror story.

Egidijus: [00:47:17:19] Yes.

Amit: [00:47:19:01] Okay. Yeah. You know, at times, uh. It’s. Nothing specific at times, you know. I won’t say the whole horror story. Okay. I worked with 3 or 4 different operators. So with a couple of operators. Right? For me, I just need to start it from the scratch. Okay. When you do things, starting from the scratch is much easier, right? Because, you know, it’s like it’s a plain board. You can write whatever you want it to write. You can scribble on that one. But if you work with a little mature, uh, I would say operator and you try to change things, it’s not easy, right? Because it’s already embedded with them. They already there into the system. They have their own style of working. Now you come up, you come from outside with a different thought process, right? And you try to change. Right? So when you try to change and people are resistant right in the beginning and it takes some time, right. You need to convince you need to you need to win them first and then you can recommend changes. So I won’t say it’s a horror story, but I found that one little challenging for me. And, uh, you know, when you work in different environments, different countries, different cultures, it’s it’s inevitable, right? We know that, you know, okay, it’s expected that, you know, it’s possible. So I at the same time, I feel proud as well that, you know, I know how to how to deal and how to, how to manage, you know, things in different parts of the world.

Egidijus: [00:48:55:10] Yeah. I totally understand you because it’s it’s a cultural package and then legacy package and then, you know, the the CVM context package, it’s it’s a big scope to handle it. Yes. And, um, for the fellow customer value managers, could you recommend some learning methods on how to become a great customer value manager, whether it would be so.

Amit: [00:49:23:19] See, you know, the most important point that I discussed, uh, with, with the, with the teams that I worked with. And, uh, so for me, the most important thing is we need to look at business holistically. Won’t, you know, think only CVM. CVM has a role to play, but at the end of the day, you need to act like a co. You are an entrepreneur right in the business. So we need to ensure that, you know, we contribute, you know, to the top line numbers we have. Nobody is interested that you know how your campaign is performing right at a as you move up the ladder, right when you interact with people at a senior level. So nobody is interested. People are more interested. Your contribution or I would say the CVM contribution to the overall business if my top line number is going up, it’s performing well. That means we are contributing it. But if the top line number is going down and you’re doing amazingly well to me, I think that is when we need to revisit our thoughts. We need to revisit, you know, the the way we operate. So the way I look at things, yes, I’m a I’m, I was head of CVM. I’m a I’m consulting for CVM. Right. But what is most important is that, you know, we need to look at the overall business growth, not specific to your domain. That is the key thing.

Egidijus: [00:50:53:23] Okay. So you need to think as a CEO basically.

Amit: [00:51:01:06] We can call it CCO, right. Maybe one step below. Because as a CEO, right, you have other responsibilities as well when it comes to finance, when it comes to network and other challenges as well. But CCO role is more into sales and marketing, right? So as a marketeer, we need to think marketing that, you know, how can I contribute best to the to to the business.

Egidijus: [00:51:24:14] Mhm.

Egidijus: [00:51:25:13] And I have one bonus question. Um, we are on a mission to making customer value managers famous because it’s a very niche role but very important role in an organization. And usually nobody knows about them too much. My question is how can we make, uh, these CVM guys more famous in the world and in the organizations?

Amit: [00:51:53:00] See, when it comes to. Yeah. So it’s a very important one as well, right. See, when we are talking about customer value manager okay. There are two aspects to this one. One is the marketing side of it. Second, the technical side of it. And uh, because I had a team in the past that, you know, I had a dedicated person for development. Dedicated team for analytics and dedicated team for managing the marketing activities as well. It’s very important. Marketing. Marketing people have their own carriage, right? Own challenges that you know they are looking for a growth on month on month basis. And as a CVM manager, how come that person can actually help, you know, uh, the, the marketing manager to achieve their targets? This can be done with two things, right? One is we need to again go back and analyze the opportunities in the business. Second is that, you know, building capabilities, building capabilities is for a long term from from the aspect. Right. If you build capabilities, I think most of these things that we spoke today, it cannot be delivered right if we don’t have capabilities in place. Right. So when we talk about inbound marketing, it sounds that you know everything is plug and play. Nothing is plug and play. It’s all about that, you know, building capabilities. And there are operators where we took 3 to 4 years to reach to a certain maturity. Right. So as a marketing manager you need to play or wear different hats. At times the marketing manager need to wear a hat of a marketer. At times you need to think as a technical expert as well, at times the analytical expert. So as a whole, at the end of the day, everybody is mission is to improve the overall, you know, the business goal right. The the business.

Egidijus: [00:53:50:17] So thank you Amit. It was a very interesting and exciting conversation.

Exacaster: [00:53:55:15] CVM Stories is produced by Exacaster. We help companies take their customer value management to the next level. To stay updated on our latest episodes, subscribe to the podcast or sign up for an email newsletter at exacaster.com/cvmstories.