Challenge
Orange was the third largest mobile operator in Austria. It had 2.3 million subscribers, 1 million are postpaid customers, the rest are prepaid and MVNO customers. Austria has one of the most competitive mobile landscapes in Europe where 4 carriers and several MVNOs operate in a market with a population of 8 million. The mobile penetration rate sits at 153%, handsets are subsidized and tariffs are low.
Orange had been using Comverse’s Who Called platform as its default Missed Call Notification service for many years. It simply notified a customer when callers had tried to reach them unsuccessfully. However, very often a customer will not recognize the NUMBER and remains no better informed about the identity of the caller.
Orange wanted to change this practice and create a point of difference between them and other network operators in Austria. At the same time, it was crucial that innovating also earned the company a new source of top line revenue.
Solution
In February 2011 Orange introduced NameThatNumber. The service automatically includes the NAME of the caller in the missed call notification. The integration was completed in less than 4 weeks and no additional hardware or software were required on Orange’s side.
NameThatNumber is a tariff option that comes with every tariff and costs €1/ month in addition to the monthly tariff base fee. The first 2 months of the service are free to the user. Before the end of the free trial period Orange sends an SMS to all customers with a reminder to opt-out in case they don’t want to keep the service.
Result
Orange customers are highly satisfied with the service. Over 70% of customers keep the service and only 30% opt out. This is by far the highest retention rate Orange has seen with comparable services.