Despite reports from most wireless carriers that they have seen little
to no impact in customer churn related to the implementation of wireless local
number portability in the top 100 markets last November and this past May across
the rest of the country, the fact that millions of wireless and wireline
customers have taken their phone numbers to other telecommunications providers
during the past several months indicates that customers are indeed taking
advantage of LNP.
Instead of just watching those customers leave, Accudata
Technologies said its recently launched Operating Company Name Lookup service
would allow carriers to track the destination of churning customers and attempt
to win them back with incentives or better offers. Accudata Chief Executive
Officer Gregory Smith noted that by accessing a number of databases, the company
can provide the current locations of former customers in less than 24 hours from
the time they switched and in most cases return that information in near real
time.
“If service providers know where their subscribers have gone,
they’ll have the opportunity to contact those subscribers and match offers or
sweeten the deal to win them back,” Smith explained.
A consumer survey
conducted by The Management Network Group Inc. prior to the implementation of
WLNP last year showed that 27 percent of respondents expressed an interest in
porting their numbers as soon as they received better offers. Accudata figures
that if a carrier is able to lure a customer with incentives, the old carrier
should have a chance to lure them back.
“Carriers have a three-day window
of opportunity to try and get a churned customer back,” Smith said.
“If a customer is valuable enough, we can give the carrier the time
necessary to at least contact that customer and try to win them
back.”
Accudata noted it has seen interest from a number of second-tier
wireless carriers and CLECs for its service, and a rural CLEC in Texas is
currently using the service for billing assurance, but it does not expect to see
much interest from the nation’s larger wireless and wireline companies as many
of them already have similar resources and access to national
databases.
`We’ve seen zip interest from the tier 1s,” Smith
added.
While carrier reception has been mixed, Accudata said it has received
strong interest from telemarketing firms that are often employed by
telecommunications providers to contact customers. Smith explained that with
stringent rules preventing telemarketing firms from contacting customers’ cell
phones, they are interested in keeping abreast as to whether a customer has
transferred a wireline number to a wireless phone.
Analysts remain skeptical
of the possibility of luring back a churned customer, noting that if the
customer has gone through the trouble of the porting process, they most likely
do not want to hear again from that carrier.
“Customers are not going to
take the time to port a number unless they really want to leave a carrier,”
said Larry Swasey, wireless industry analyst at Visant Strategies. “More
than likely they are going to a new carrier because they offer something their
old carrier does not, and I doubt the old carrier will be able to throw
something together to match that offer in a couple of days.”
Swasey said
carriers could use the information to guide their long-term plans, noting that
if a number of young adult customers are leaving for a particular carrier that
just launched a new device or messaging product, the old carrier could look at
eventually introducing a similar product or service to retain its existing
customers.
Accudata acknowledged the challenges in winning a customer back
once they have churned, but echoed Swasey’s opinion that carriers can at least
adjust their service offerings to try and stop additional subscribers from
churning.
