The telecom market has seen steady growth, with its size projected to increase from USD 2970.7 billion in 2023 to USD 3106.93 billion in 2024, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.6% (Source: Research and Markets). Statista also projects a continual rise in global ARPU, predicting an increase of USD 11.6 (6.25%) between 2023 and 2028, reaching USD 197.23 by 2028. In this rapidly expanding market, where products are becoming commoditized, delivering exceptional customer experiences has become the key differentiator in an increasingly competitive environment.

The telecommunication industry is undergoing a massive transformation driven by technological advancements and shifting customer behaviors. The widespread adoption of smartphones, the rollout of 5G networks, and the increasing reliance on digital services have redefined how telecom operators interact with their customers. This dynamic environment offers both opportunities and challenges for telecom operators. On one hand, there is immense potential for innovation and growth; on the other, the market is becoming increasingly competitive with over-the-top (OTT) players and new market entrants vying for consumer attention and dollars.

For telecom operators, boosting consumer revenues is more critical than ever. Traditional revenue streams like voice and SMS are on the decline, making it essential for operators to find new ways to drive income. Enhanced consumer revenues can lead to improved profitability, enabling operators to invest in new technologies, expand their services, and ultimately provide better value to their customers. Moreover, higher revenues can help telecom operators maintain a competitive edge, ensure financial stability, and support long-term growth strategies. As the industry evolves, focusing on increasing consumer revenues is not just a strategic choice but a necessity for survival and success.

Despite the large-scale adoption of smartphones, tablets, and mobile networks worldwide, telecom operators are grappling with the big challenge of uplifting ARPU. The fall in revenue from core services including voice and text has outweighed the increase in data revenue, leading to a notable decline in ARPU. This challenge affects the entire industry, transcending size or geographic location. Intense competition among operators, market saturation, and the rise of OTT players have significantly impacted telcos, resulting in reduced revenue and increased churn. OTT players compete fiercely in core areas such as voice, text, and data, consistently rolling out innovative and appealing apps and solutions that capture a large portion of the market.

To address these challenges and improve their ARPU, telcos should focus on key strategies such as diversification, innovation, enhancing customer experience, building synergies, identifying crucial partnerships, targeting growth in specific market segments, and leveraging insights from data. These strategies are important components that telecom operators must integrate into their ARPU strategies.

High-impact strategies and breakthrough technologies like moLotus mobile video customer interaction platform can effectively enhance customer acquisition, reduce churn, sustain and expand their subscriber base, and ultimately improve the average revenue per user by 2 to 4 per cent. Traditional approaches like offering incentives in data plans, decreasing tariff rates, and social media advertising may result in short-term benefits, however, they are unlikely to provide a sustainable solution for operators in the long run.

Big telecom players like Vodafone, Indosat Ooredoo, Hutchinson, Airtel, and Celcom are evolving at an unprecedented pace, with increasing competition and changing consumer demands. They are continuously seeking ways to boost consumer revenues and stay ahead in this dynamic landscape.

This article delves into five actionable steps that can help operators enhance their revenue streams. By adopting these strategies, telecom operators can not only sustain but also grow their consumer revenues in the face of an ever-changing digital landscape.

1. Transforming Customer Experience

Enhancing customer experience is a key strategy for boosting consumer revenues in the telecom sector. Telcos must prioritize customer satisfaction and build lasting relationships by providing seamless experiences across all touchpoints.

To achieve this, investing in responsive interfaces and intuitive self-service digital platforms like moLotus is essential. By enabling customers to effortlessly access services, telecom providers can reduce churn and create upselling opportunities.

Proactive customer support and quick issue resolution are crucial for ensuring a positive experience. Leveraging moLotus AI avatars which act as intelligent virtual assistants, can provide real-time support, promptly addressing feedback, queries, and concerns.

Telcos are building enduring relationships with millennials by leveraging moLotus's transformative capabilities, such as digital rewards, FAQs, real-time customer ratings, mobile reminders, instructional content, and mobile feedback channels. Research indicates that moLotus has reduced outbound process costs for telcos by up to thirty per cent while simultaneously improving customer satisfaction levels.

Nowadays, customers are showing a strong preference for digital over face-to-face assistance. They now expect swift and efficient services, with little tolerance for delays. Telcos must be more determined than ever to overcome these challenges by automating various customer processes, such as document submission, order processing, and customer service.

To address these complexities, many telecom brands are adopting automation tools that streamline processes and boost ARPU. Tools like Marketo, moLotus, and Hubspot are pivotal in automating customer processes, making them faster, more convenient, and hassle-free. The advanced automation capabilities of the moLotus platform are being utilized to automate various customer interactions, including onboarding, reminders, thank-you communications, and more. This automation reduces costs while enhancing revenue and improving customer engagement.

2. Data-Enhanced Customer Communication

In the telecom industry, leveraging data-driven personalization techniques is a game-changer for boosting consumer revenues. By leveraging customer data, telecom providers can deliver targeted and relevant offers to their subscribers. Analyzing customer behavior, preferences, and usage patterns allows telcos to create tailored packages and promotions that resonate with individual consumers.

Telcos can design and deliver personalized plans, services, and interactions that cater to the unique needs and preferences of their customers. By analyzing data such as location and usage patterns, telcos gain deeper insights into customer preferences. This information can be used to offer personalized discounts, promotions, and recommendations, enhancing customer loyalty and lifetime value, and ultimately driving higher ARPU. Tools like moLotus facilitate this process by enabling telcos to segment their customer base based on usage patterns, languages, demographics, and preferences, allowing for personalized plans and services for each segment and individual customer.

In a telecom industry outlook report by Deloitte, it was highlighted that many customers perceive minimal differences in performance among their service providers. Telecom businesses often target customers with similar offerings, lacking sufficient differentiation. Attracting, delighting, acquiring, and retaining consumers requires telcos to adopt rapid, data-driven, customer-centric, personalized, and dynamic campaigns. Research indicates that telcos excelling in personalization generate forty percent more revenue than their counterparts.

Hyper-personalization, facilitated by tools like moLotus, is a vital catalyst for ARPU growth in a saturated and highly competitive telecom market. By utilizing customer data assets and analytics through moLotus, telcos can transform their approach to customer lifecycle value management. They can deliver hyper-personalized recommendations, offers, and messages tailored to individual customers, including special occasions like birthdays, anniversaries, and festivals.

Tech-savvy customers are increasingly gravitating towards telcos that prioritize interactive communication through innovative mobile technologies like moLotus. This technology offers various customer response options, including SMS, web links, USSD, call-backs, and mgrams. moLotus transforms telco-customer communication, making it real-time, mobile-friendly, seamless, easily accessible, simple, and engaging. By focusing on data-driven customer communication, telcos can differentiate themselves from competitors and establish stronger, more personalized relationships with their customers.

3. Enhancing Efficiency Through Tech Partnerships

To boost ARPU, telcos must stay ahead of emerging technologies and embrace innovative solutions. Advances in 5G, artificial intelligence, and mobile ad tech are transforming how telecom providers engage with their customers and generate revenue.

The introduction of 5G brings new opportunities for delivering high-speed, low-latency services. Telcos can leverage these technologies to offer enhanced consumer experiences, such as immersive mobile videos and innovative mobile solutions. Mobile advertising technologies enable access to new revenue streams and cater to evolving consumer demands. Additionally, automation and AI-based tools can revolutionize customer support and engagement, improving efficiency, enhancing consumer satisfaction, and driving consumer revenues.

Telcos like Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison, Vodafone, Celcom, Airtel, and Maxis are increasingly partnering with mobile technology leaders like moLotus to strengthen their enterprise business sector presence. These collaborations have become vital elements of their marketing mix and overall transformation strategy. For instance, in Indonesia, moLotus has teamed up with Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison to launch the iAds-MGram service, powered by moLotus. The iAds-MGram campaigns have effectively increased lead generation, conversion rates, customer responses, and customer acquisition, resulting in immediate revenue growth with high margins.

Bundling telecom services with high-quality content attracts new customers and encourages existing subscribers to upgrade their plans. This strategy increases ARPU by providing customers with additional value and entertainment options, thereby reducing churn and boosting consumer revenues.

4. Strategic Upselling and Cross-selling

Upselling and cross-selling are effective strategies that can significantly boost ARPU in the telecom industry. By leveraging these techniques, telcos can increase customer spending, enhance customer satisfaction, and ultimately drive revenue growth. According to Hubspot, 72 percent of sales professionals who upsell and 74 percent who cross-sell believe these strategies can boost consumer revenue by up to 30 percent.

A new technology like moLotus is transforming the way telcos approach upselling and cross-selling initiatives. By capturing and analyzing customer data, moLotus enables telcos to identify upsell and cross-sell opportunities, track customer interactions, and run unique campaigns. This technology measures campaign success, ultimately boosting consumer revenue generation efforts. moLotus upselling and cross-selling campaigns not only drive immediate revenue growth but also have long-term benefits. By increasing customer spending and engagement, these campaigns improve customer retention and reduce churn rates. Satisfied customers who have been successfully upsold or cross-sold are more likely to remain loyal and recommend the telecom brands to others, leading to additional ARPU through referrals and positive word-of-mouth.

Upselling includes persuading clients to upgrade their existing telco services or products to higher-tier options with advanced features, benefits, or increased usage limits. This strategy encourages customers to spend more by offering them upgrades that align with their evolving needs and preferences. For example, a telecom company might entice a customer to upgrade from a basic mobile data plan to a premium plan with higher data limits, faster speeds, and additional perks such as free content streaming services. By upselling, telecoms not only increase the ARPU of individual customers but also cultivate long-term loyalty and satisfaction.

Cross-selling focuses on promoting complementary products or services to existing customers. Telcos have a wide range of offerings beyond basic voice and data plans, including value-added services. Through cross-selling, telcos can capitalize on their existing customer base by promoting these additional services. For example, a customer who has subscribed to a mobile plan might be targeted with an offer to add a discounted subscription to a music streaming service. This not only creates more revenue but also boosts customer relationships.

To effectively execute upselling and cross-selling strategies, telcos need a deep understanding of customer preferences, behavior, and usage patterns. Telecom brands should leverage customer data and advanced analytics to identify upsell and cross-sell opportunities. By analyzing customer usage patterns, demographics, and purchase history, telecom providers can run targeted upselling and cross-selling offers and recommendations.

Traditionally, telcos have used multiple channels such as social media, call centers, and retail stores to reach customers with upsell and cross-sell offers and promotions, but these methods often have lower success rates. With moLotus, telcos can streamline these processes and achieve higher success rates in their upselling and cross-selling efforts.

5. Expansion and Enrichment in Telco Offerings

Diversification and scaling are essential strategies for significantly boosting ARPU in the telecom industry. By broadening their offerings and expanding their operations globally, telcos can tap into new revenue streams, attract a larger customer base, and ultimately drive higher ARPU.

Diversification involves expanding the range of products, services, and solutions offered by telcos. This approach allows telecom brands to cater to a broader range of customer needs and preferences, capturing additional revenue opportunities. For instance, a telecom company traditionally focused on voice and data services might diversify into value-added services such as cloud storage. This expansion generates additional revenue and enhances the overall customer experience and engagement.

Diversification also enables telcos to target different customer segments and industry verticals. By tailoring specific solutions for business customers, enterprise clients, or niche markets, telecom brands can unlock new revenue streams with higher ARPU potential. For example, offering specialized mobile advertising solutions for industries like healthcare, e-commerce, or automobiles can lead to increased ARPU, as customers in these sectors have unique requirements and are willing to pay a premium for personalized services.

Scaling focuses on expanding the reach and capacity of telecom operations. This includes upgrading infrastructure and enhancing service capabilities to accommodate a larger customer base. Scaling allows telcos to serve more customers without compromising service quality, thus driving revenue growth and higher ARPU. By scaling, telcos can entice new customers in formerly underserved areas and increase market share.

To effectively diversify and scale, telcos need to adopt a strategic approach via technologies. This involves conducting market research, identifying growth opportunities, and aligning diversification and scaling strategies with the telco's overall vision and capabilities. Telecom brands should evaluate market trends, customer demands, and competitive landscapes to identify areas where diversification and scaling can create a competitive advantage and drive higher ARPU.

Marketing tools like moLotus, Zapier, Expandi.io, HubSpot, and InMobi assist telcos in diversifying and scaling by increasing customer demand, reaching global customers, and diversifying the business. Globally scalable moLotus campaigns stand out in reaching millions of customers daily within seconds on their mobile devices, regardless of phone type—feature phone, smartphone, or iPhone.

Experts advise telecom brands to invest in moLotus for launching new products and services, offering an innovative go-to-market strategy. This strategy includes a cluster of marketing activities that ensure a telco product’s successful entry into the market within three months. Major telcos use moLotus for various product launches, including new product entries, rebranding existing products, and introducing new iterations of existing products. By expanding their offerings and scaling their operations via moLotus, telcos can tap into new revenue streams, attract a larger customer base, and drive higher ARPU.

Conclusion

The strategies outlined - diversification, scaling, data-driven communication, upselling & cross-selling, and automating & transforming customer experience - are essential for telecom operators to boost consumer revenues. In the rapidly evolving telecom industry, innovation and adaptability are key to staying competitive and driving continuous consumer revenue growth. All telecom operators are encouraged to take proactive steps in implementing these strategies. By embracing innovation and leveraging advanced technologies like moLotus, telecom operators can pave the way for sustained consumer revenue growth and success in the market.