Building sustainable MVNO businesses by increasing customer lifetime value

Since 2009, Tweakker has morphed from being a small start-up to a world-leading MVNO cloud service provider. Simplicity and high-quality device data spiced with a few ingenious MVNO optimised solutions have always been the hallmarks of Tweakker’s success with MVNOs.

As the MVNO business has grown, their needs have changed. Establishing an MVNO is always a business risk and fast revenue uptake is crucial from the outset. At the same time, discounted service offerings and a race-to-the-bottom pricing policy do not provide a sustainable business model and MVNOs must be able to increase customer lifetime value rapidly by driving higher service consumption and better customer loyalty.

Enabling faster revenue uptake image

Today’s mobile device market make MVNOs’ customer onboarding process much more demanding. The smartphone base is more and more diversified and dominated by low-cost devices. Combined with the growing bring-your-own-device (BYOD) service model, MVNOs must now be able to setup countless distinct device models in order to get new customers onboard.

Setting up a handset for any MVNO network is not that easy. The inbuilt APN setup capabilities in modern smartphones do not usually support MVNO network settings and approximately 30% of mobile handsets do not support automatic over-the-air (OTA) setup. MVNOs’ customer onboarding success too often depends on customers’ abilities to self-configure their devices.

Device setup has become the most crucial step in an MVNOs’ customer onboarding process. Every new customer notices a failed device setup immediately – it prohibits customers from using MVNO services, needlessly occupies customer care service time, slows down revenue uptake and destroys the welcome experience.

To solve the MVNOs device setup related problems, Tweakker provides MVNOs a Customer Onboarding solution for all setup scenarios based on market-leading device identification data and a complete set of certified over-the-air settings library. Tweakker enables MVNOs to optimize their customer onboarding process for faster revenue uptake and reduced customer care costs.

Better customer service at low cost

Competition among MVNOs is fierce and for 67% according to a Telesperience report providing better customer service has become an important way to differentiate.

For today’s mobile subscribers, better customer service usually means easy self-care tools being available to solve their connectivity problems whenever wherever. It also means having knowledgeable customer care specialists capable of providing help during the first call, without the need for a follow-up call.

Over 50% of customer care calls today concern smartphone related questions, and handling and solving smartphone-related cases needlessly wastes customer care agents’ time. As the handset population continues to diversify thanks to BYOD business models, providing a better customer service is becoming mission impossible at a time when customer care costs have to be kept under strict financial control.

To solve the dilemma of better service at lower costs, Tweakker now introduces an online optimized Smartphone Support solution, which minimizes the burden of smartphone problems for any MVNO’s business. Combined with Tweakker Customer Onboarding solution, the Smartphone Support solution proactively drives subscribers to use the MVNO’s Device Guides self-care portal, instead of calling the care center.

Tweakker Device Guides enable call center care agents to help customers more efficiently. At the click of a mouse, an agent triggers an over-the-air APN setup to the caller’s handset or sends the caller a link to the correct self-care help page to avoid lengthy discussions. You have a guaranteed way to a higher First Call Resolution index, which, for an MVNO, simply means a better customer service at a lower cost.

Faster adoption of new services  

The initial success of any MVNO endeavor is often based on low price. But low pricing can also be the reason for business failure. The ability to upsell new services and larger service packages during the customer lifetime is crucial for a sustained, profitable MVNO business.

According to Telesperience, 42% of MVNOs consider better customer understanding the key for business growth. It enables increased sales through more precisely targeted upsell offers and better-optimized service portfolio.

As an example, how does an MVNO launching 4G services know who in the subscriber base to target promotions? When a subscriber’s profile only reveals who doesn’t yet have 4G service, Tweakker’s Device Data complements the profile with information about which already uses a 4G handset, MVNOs can identify a lucrative customer segment for upselling new 4G services.

Tweakker Device Data is the missing piece of MVNOs’ subscriber profile. It provides up-to-date device identification data and rich device capability information with 150+ data points per device. Tweakker Device Data is available through a simple web API as one-by-one HTTP requests, or as a frequently updated file delivery.

Tweakker Increases Customer Lifetime Value

Building a sustainable MVNO business is a challenging endeavor. Making a business out of thin margins in an ultra-competitive market is not a walk in the park for any MVNO. However, many have succeeded with Tweakker’s help. Our mission is to help MVNOs succeed in increasing customer lifetime value through rapid revenue uptake enabled by seamless device setup, through higher customer loyalty and great customer service experiences, and by unlocking more upsell opportunities through better customer understanding.