Today, telecom operators in the retail sector need to focus on their customers in order to maintain and increase their market share to prevail over their competitors.
Retailers have a wide range of offers that they provide their subscribed customers. These customers often need to make and receive international calls.
The international voice offers of retail operators are of central strategic importance:
- as sources of revenue
- because of the need to offer call quality and attractive prices
- as a way to retain customers, thanks to attractive and long-lasting offers
Need
These marketing activities generate needs: finding the best offers on the wholesale market to bring an attractive product to retail subscribers.
Retailers have had to develop another activity: wholesale, in a growing market.
However, voice wholesale is characterised by more complex management, far removed from the retail market: a market that shifts daily, is highly technical, subject to regulation in most countries and generates low margins.
Challenge
The use of International Voice is on a downward trend and benefits the Over The Top (OTT) applications that consume Data (Whats app, Messenger, etc.). This gives subscribers the impression that services are free of charge to subscribers and thus makes pay-by-the-minute rates hard to justify.
The wholesale market requires expert resources in: management; optimisation of by-the-minute traffic and prices; routing; anti-fraud; employee recruitment and training (expert resources); supervision, payment and issuing of multiple invoices; processing of complaints between operators – all alongside investments in information systems and network infrastructure.
Solution
The Voice market is evolving and the idea of outsourcing all or part of the International Voice Traffic activity can be a way to help retailers focus on their core business and scale back their investments while keeping a foot in the wholesale world.