T-Mobile: Leading the Way in the Czech Republic
T-Mobile Czech Republic is the largest of three mobile operators in the Czech Republic, with more than five million customers in a country with a population of about 10 million and mobile phone penetration of more than 100%.
T-Mobile Czech Republic was founded in 1996, and has been using the T-Mobile brand since 2002. Its vision and focus are to provide the best value to customers for their money, to respond flexibly to trends in technological development, keeping pace with the highest global standards of technology and quality.
The Need: To Expand Call Completion Revenues from Non-Voicemail Subscribers
Because voice calls continue to reign as the greatest revenue generator, calls that do not get completed represent a significant loss of potential income. Who Called and Voicemail recover a portion of this potential for T-Mobile Czech Republic, but their large non-voicemail segment (about two thirds of their users are not voicemail subscribers) generates lower call completion revenue.
T-Mobile Czech Republic identified a number of ways to boost call completion revenues, including improving voicemail, and introducing other messaging solutions and call completion alternatives. T-Mobile Czech Republic decided to focus its attention on providing Call Completion alternatives for the non-voicemail segment.
The Challenge: Appealing to the Non-Voicemail Segment
A major challenge in deploying a comprehensive call completion solution was to find a way to address and appeal to the non-voicemail segment in order to successfully leverage those formerly lost call attempts.
The Solution: Comverse Multimedia Call Completion
T-Mobile Czech Republic selected the Comverse Multimedia Call Completion (MCC) solution, branding it as the MMS Voice Courier service.
Comverse Multimedia Call Completion enables callers to complete their calls to parties who do not have voicemail by means of expressive voice messages. Every time the non-voicemail called party cannot answer a call, the calling party is offered an opportunity to leave a voice message. The prompt, featuring a famous local actress identified with the T-Mobile brand, is differentiated from voicemail. It is short and friendly, with a focus on immediate, guaranteed delivery:
“Don’t hang up please! Record a message and we will deliver it immediately…”
The message, enhanced with multimedia elements (T-Mobile branding and special pictures), is delivered immediately as an MMS message to the handset of the called party, who can press to hear it at once or whenever convenient.
The MMS Voice Courier integrates with Who Called for best user experience and optimal revenue generation.
Why Selected: Flexibly Meets T-Mobile Needs and Preferences
Comverse MCC was selected because it directly addressed the specific operator needs and the preferences of T-Mobile Czech’s non-voicemail users. For example:
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The Price Is Right: MCC is free for the called party. Many users avoided subscribing to voicemail because they perceived it as too expensive. MCC overcomes this barrier because it is known to be entirely free to the called party.
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Immediate Delivery Guaranteed: Listening to voicemail messages was perceived by some as too complicated; and senders do not know whether their messages are heard. The Multimedia Call Completion user interface is attractively simple: with voice messages sent directly to the handset. Simple to send, and simple to hear.
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“Cool” Service: Whereas voicemail is perceived as old-fashioned by many non-voicemail subscribers, Multimedia Call Completion is positioned differently as a “cool” alternative.
By successfully addressing points such as the above, Comverse Multimedia Call Completion is able to give operators a competitive edge that increases user satisfaction and significantly boosts revenues.
Strong Results: Users Get the Message and Send Twice as Many Messages as Voicemail
The success of T-Mobile’s MMS Voice Courier Service is due to a combination of factors, including intelligent promotion and user education such as teasers on the Web portal, MMS and SMS campaigns, electronic newsletters to subscribers, bill inserts, and more. Automatic activation was chosen, so that users had to take action only if they wanted to opt out of the service. The majority of the subscribers continue using the service.
The service was launched in November 2006. Within two months (end of January 2007), initial goals were already exceeded with a message sending rate that doubled the message deposit rate on voicemail. Monthly ARPU from the service is approximately 0.70 Euro per subscriber. The service garnered positive reactions from users (“…it is nice and practical”), and subscribers who were automatically provided with the service demonstrated their satisfaction with a low deactivation rate.
Moreover, voicemail usage statistics show that there is no cannibalization of voicemail as a result of the Multimedia Call Completion launch.
"If you have issues similar to the ones we had, I have to tell you: the best thing you can do is go for this service. It surpasses our expectations.” said Michal Podlucky, Senior Head of Category & Product Management at T-Mobile Czech Republic.”