Enhancing Revenue at the P.O.S.

The bottom line in a retail environment is that revenue opportunities must be maximized. Unfortunately, telecom has not capitalized on seamless OSS/BSS/PoS (point-of-sale) solutions. Current PoS offerings do little to leverage ancillary sales during retail purchasing situations.

To maximize revenue and deliver a better customer experience, service providers need to improve their PoS capability by gaining visibility into customers’ purchasing preferences and guiding sales representatives when it comes to follow-on sales.

Opportunity Costs

A man walks into a retail store to buy a new cell phone. He finds one he loves and activates it, but this is not an entirely successful sale. A new customer was acquired, but the sales experience was not all that it could be. Imagine that the same new customer wanders over to Radio Shack to buy a new Bluetooth headset, and then on to Office Max for a protective cover for his handset.

The more than $90 spent with other retailers is a missed revenue opportunity for the mobile phone retailer, which should have secured the accessory sales to capitalize on the customer’s interest. Retail employees are at a significant disadvantage when it comes to anything besides serving as "order takers." Without the appropriate support, they have little visibility into customers’ purchasing preferences and little guidance when it comes to follow-on sales.

For many service providers, the PoS aspect of their sales strategy remains elusive. Software solutions for the retail environment rarely provide the critical elements that telecommunications companies need to excel in customer service. Many were designed as an afterthought and only are integrated loosely with the rest of the service provider’s OSS/BSS infrastructure. Others were designed for general retail use and do not include telecom-specific functionality. That fact tends to add manual processes that fuel a poor customer experience in the long run.

The key to providing superior service in the retail environment is arming sales associates with an easy-to-use, but powerful technology infrastructure that provides critical data when needed. To achieve this, the PoS needs to be able to share data with the service provider’s operations and billing system so that an overall snapshot of the customer can be made available.

A shared customer database is necessary for visibility into the customer’s purchasing and payment habits across the organization. The customer database needs to be shared among the PoS and the OSS/BSS. By quickly scanning the customer’s account, sales representatives would know important details about items that could be of value to the customer. For instance, being able to check whether a new customer has made an insurance claim beforehand, and offering insurance if there isn’t any. That ability becomes a valuable upselling and personalized care opportunity.

A single product catalog will help to manage one of the more challenging parts of a retail sales environment: keeping employees and the PoS system up-to-date on the products and packages currently available.

Even small product differences in the PoS system can create significant problems ranging from failed activations to billing inaccuracies — either of which leads to a negative customer experience. A single product catalog can eliminate discrepancies and minimize situations where inconsistent product and billing information affects customer relationships.

Guiding the Sales Process

In addition to sharing data across the OSS/BSS and PoS solutions, service providers should offer their retail employees methodologies or protocols for making helpful suggestions to customers during the sales cycle. For example, a "guided assignment" feature can help sales representatives navigate order entry and product upsell processes using a Wizard.

Instead of relying on a salesperson’s experience or knowledge of a particular phone or product offering, guided assignment would deliver reminders throughout the order-entry process to ensure accessories, insurance plans and feature enhancements can be offered based on standard packages, special promotions and the customer’s personal purchasing decisions.

This insight into customer history, current needs and available products can close the gap between retail and enterprise environments, as well as create additional revenue opportunities throughout the order process.

Creating Hybrid Products

The seamless offering of the OSS/BSS/PoS creates the opportunity to implement new products that can take a service provider into new markets. By sharing critical data points with the OSS/BSS, a retail environment can make use of rating capabilities to create hybrid postpaid/prepaid products.

Such capabilities open up the door to expand services beyond the provider’s traditional postpaid market targets, and without the need for an additional platform. An "advance pay" product offering can provide for the purchase of service at the PoS and immediate activation for a specific period.

The benefits for both the service providers and customers are numerous. The service providers’ benefits include: no platform to purchase, minimal customer care requirements, no subsidies on equipment, and operations costs pegged on a revenue-earned basis as opposed to per-subscriber basis.

The customers, on the other hand, require no contracts or credit checks. This is attractive for people who have a difficult time meeting the credit score requirements that most operators establish for postpaid service. Customers purchase required service only with no penalties for "gaps" in service. They can be free to purchase services only when and where it is needed.

Service simplicity is yet another customer advantage whereby advance pay solutions offer a means for securing top-notch wireless service, while sticking to a budget as services and features mirror postpaid offerings with no limitations among other benefits.

These hybrid product offerings are, for example, attractive to the elderly, who are seeking the security of owning a cellular phone while being able to select their own handsets and adhere to fixed budgets.

With the flexibility to create unique service offerings like advance pay, service providers can leverage the strength of an integrated OSS/BSS and PoS solution to target markets beyond their traditional scope.

Improving the Bottom Line

With a PoS solution, a service provider can capture the money spent on accessories at Radio Shack and Office Max through guided assignment suggestions.

Secondly, a glance at the customer’s history reveals traditionally hidden facts, such as a spouse under the same plan with a phone that is more than three years old. The suggestion for an upsell on the wife’s phone could be made, potentially leading to an additional sale.

Thirdly, a reminder screen that pops up to ask about children and their need for a phone can yield important information. A customer may have a 12-year-old son begging for his own phone. Perhaps the new advance pay product would be a place to start for this family member.

A one-month basic trial of Advance Pay plus the phone could add nearly $100 to a customer’s invoice. This could increase the bottom-line revenue substantially.

The capabilities fostered by a powerful PoS solution helps retail employees ask solid, well-founded questions that result in a positive return on investment.

Stacey Michaels is the marketing communications manager at Info Directions, a developer of net-centric billing, rating, order management, workflow and selling solutions for the telecom industry.