Unfriendly call-drops in the ocean of friendly conversations
By : Manikantan G
Principal Solution Architect
In recent times, call-drop phenomena has emerged as a menacing blot on India’s much-appreciated telecom revolution. The annoyance among the mobile consumers in the world’s second largest mobile user market is understandable when being cut off in the middle of a conversation frequently. Despite the seemingly ubiquitous telecom towers in the cities, consumers still have to rush from one room to another to find the best spot at home or office to continue the conversations.
Complaints relating to telecom sector, including call-drops, is the second biggest concern of consumers, according to data provided by the National Consumer Helpline (NCH). And the Google trend further substantiates call-drops as the top-of-the-mind consumer concern.
Google trend on Keyword search “Call-drop”
The regulatory body in India TRAI, defines a call-drop as the telcos’ inability to maintain a call, either incoming or outgoing, once it has been correctly established. Even though TRAI’s recent attempt to hold the telcos accountable for the call-drop nuisance through bringing in compensation plans for the consumers has been struck down by the court, it is important for telcos to handle call-drops properly.
100% mobile penetration and multi-SIM phenomena are leaving limited avenues for telcos to go after new customer acquisition. Thus customer retention is emerging as the most important strategic pillar for telcos long-term profitability.
Diving deep reveals the drivers of call-drops
There is a continuous debate among stakeholders (Telcos, Regulators, government etc.) on the extent of responsibility on call-drops that is attributable to telcos. The devil lies in the details and there are a multitude of factors that cause a call-drop.
From the aforementioned reasons for call-drops only a fraction is directly attributable to the telcos. This is what they can look to manage. The handover issue can be corrected by giving proper definition among neighboring BTS (Base Transceiver Station). The shadow coverage can be controlled by controlling the power at which the BTS radiate or by changing the alignment of antenna. While the error in transmission media, hardware obsolescence and frequency interference issues can be reduced with proactive monitoring, pre-emptive maintenance of hardware and forward-looking frequency planning respectively.
All call-drops are annoying, some are more annoying than others
Frequent call-drops are not just annoying for the consumers, it is equally problematic for the telcos. Some direct cost associated with a call-drop includes:
- Multi-SIM phenomena: In a market like India, where 70% of the subscribers in certain segments are multi-SIM users, it is likely for them to move to another SIM for the subsequent call after call-drop.
- OTT options: In case of frequent call-drops subscribers may end up sending an SMS or WatsApp message instead of trying to call again.
In addition, call-drops also have some indirect costs as well, which are far worse:
- The biggest of this is subscriber annoyance and eventual churn, thus shrinking the customer base and lifecycle value.
- Even if the subscriber does not churn, their perception about relative network quality takes a hit if call from one network drops and calls from another network goes through.
- Influential subscribers are likely to influence others to churn as well.
Taking the bull by the horns with packaged analytics
Traditionally, call-drops are always associated with network quality. Action are taken by cell site / area / zone in isolation and not by looking at the subscribers who are affected by frequent call-drops. This approach seems to be looking at only one side of the coin as it misses out on the most important parameter – the subscriber facing the inconvenience.
With packaged analytics models telcos can come up with a comprehensive impact score that can be used as a barometer for the overall impact of a call-drop from a subscriber’s perspective. We define the call-drop impact as:
Call-drop Impact Score = f ( Annoyance Score, Customer lifetime value Score, Influence Score)
Packaged analytics models to calculate comprehensive impact score of call-drops
Bimodal approach to curb the impact of call-drops
A comprehensive impact score like the one explained above for call-drop can enable telcos to take a bimodal approach to tackle the menace of call-drops. This results into a more proactive customer experience management.
- Network side Actions:
- Use capacity concerns from high-value and influential customers as input for rollout of new cell sites and network upgrades
- Identify home-location and work-location of high-value subscribers and ensure the cell-tower quality of the route is up to the mark.
- Subscriber side actions:
- Tie subscriber usage pattern insights with actual network quality to accurately predict churn and run retention campaigns.
- Run promotional campaigns factoring-in the comprehensive impact score of the subscribers to proactively reduce annoyance of valuable subscribers ( High CLV, High Influence)
This customer-centric view of the network quality issues faced by the subscribers enables telcos to better align their operational actions with their business objectives.