BCG Greater China

Technology and Communications project

Our client, one of Greater China's largest telecommunications companies, faced intense price competition. Under pressure to protect share, the client asked us to find ways to improve customer retention and reduce churn.

We quickly developed a framework to answer three questions. 1) Who are our target customers and how do we identify them? 2) Why are these customers deciding to leave and how can we prevent them from reaching that decision? 3) Once customers decide to leave, how can we change their minds? In 3 months of challenging work with a full-time client team, we undertook detailed market research, improved the client's customer service and loyalty programs, and developed a churn prediction model, among other things.

The client was so impressed by our recommendations that implementation began before the project was officially finished. A few months later, we saw marked improvement in customer churn and satisfaction.

Click on the image to read some more personal perspectives on the project.

While a lot has been written about customer retention, most methodologies are not very practical and are also difficult to implement in rapidly changing competitive environments. One of the team's key challenges was to develop a practical framework tailored to our client's needs. It was a daunting task, but we managed to leverage our global and local resources to make it happen.

I truly enjoyed this project from beginning to end. The problem was intellectually stimulating, there was perfect chemistry between team members, and the client was engaged. Most importantly, we provided a solution that worked.

A big fan of loyalty programs, I was excited to be part of the team on this project. My role was to benchmark best practice worldwide, then to refine the client's existing loyalty program.

Using the benchmarking, plus some previous experience with loyalty programs, I designed a new program for the client, who was surprised that a loyalty program could be designed in such a scientific and logical way. Although our work was for one of the key provinces, the program was eventually adopted nationwide. I'm still amazed by the fact that I designed a loyalty program used by hundreds of millions of consumers.

Mobile customers' loyalty to their providers involves varied and complicated issues, which sums up my role on this project.

I was initially involved in complex customer database analysis, which provided a fact-base for the rest of the team. After the team had completed its preliminary analysis, my role shifted to a focus on competitive pricing and service delivery. This included understanding customers' needs, identifying areas for improvement and estimating resource requirements to achieve the end goal. When our recommendations on enhancing customer loyalty were finalized, I was responsible for designing the implementation plan to ensure that the initiatives were successfully implemented.