Increasing Customer Focus and Gaining Insights

Skinny Mobile partnered with Qrious to increase customer focus and gain insights that give it the edge in marketing that delights customers.

With the pressures of customer acquisition and retention in the ‘value’ sector of the mobile telecommunications market, Skinny is gaining a competitive edge by unlocking insights into their own data.

Through its relationship with Qrious, the application of business intelligence has become embedded in the organisation, transforming the way Skinny operates.

Skinny Mobile provides mobile solutions to cost and value-conscious customers. With a motto of ‘stripping everything back’ and providing only mobile prepay solutions, Skinny is nevertheless focused on delivering outstanding experiences for its customers.

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The challenge

With the number of telecommunications operators in New Zealand growing beyond the three major brands, Skinny has its work cut out. CEO Ross Parker explains that the sector of the market Skinny targets – with ‘no frills’ solutions – is interested in quality and value. “It’s more than low cost, though that is of course a factor. Our customers want good data, voice and text bundles, with no-nonsense service.”

Skinny’s target customer is also highly mobile, willing to change providers wherever better value might be available. As a result, notes Parker, it is necessary to understand customers and deliver the right services at the right time and the right price. “To do that, you need accurate, up to the minute information.”

However, until it engaged with Qrious, Skinny was struggling with a situation familiar to many businesses which have rapidly grown from a low base. “Telecoms companies are by nature data rich – but we had information in Excel spreadsheets and Access databases, a somewhat disjointed arrangement which severely hampered what we could do with it.”

The solution

A strong data foundation

The first step when Skinny engaged with Qrious was to consolidate and organise all of the information sources within a single data warehouse. It was a question of establishing the basics in terms of business reporting to get an understanding of a baseline for the business; with that established, Skinny moved on to more advanced applications of insights to start driving the cadence of operations on a daily basis. Parker notes the first phase was vitally important to ensure a solid foundation on which more exciting and obvious structures can be reliably built.

Understanding audience segments

In the next phase, Skinny wanted to understand specific audience segments to enhance their understanding. For example, tourists. A lot of tourists come to New Zealand and a lot of them will buy a Skinny SIM and services. Skinny wanted to better understand tourists and gather insights into what they do while here. The Qrious solution, says Parker, provided just that sort of insight and a whole lot more.

"With (customer segment) information we can design products and services which more accurately meet their needs, and also tailor marketing efforts to speak to these customers."

- Ross Parker, GM, Skinny

"Having that reporting base line is essential to have a clear and accurate understanding of what is going on in the business."

- Ross Parker, GM, Skinny

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The results

Understanding customers

Equipped with the ability to understand far more about customers than ever before, Skinny has changed the way it operates. Skinny were very conscious about churn numbers, but with tourists, they were always going to leave anyway.

By understanding which of their customers were tourists, where they came from and length of stay Skinny was able to maximise the value they deliver to tourists by providing specific packages tailored to their needs.

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Mass customisation

With the ability to understand if a customer is calling a specific region, Skinny can now provide them with a package with makes it inexpensive to chat with family and friends.

Skinny developed the ability to offer something more relevant because of the insights displayed immediately through the Qrious dashboard platform. This is just one example of how data driven insights have changed Skinny’s operations.

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Monitoring performance

Qrious provided a variety of tools used by a variety of job roles: sales managers use it to understand the performance of stores before they visit; marketers use it to manage campaigns on the fly.

Skinny can monitor the effect of a campaign in real time. This allows for Skinny to monitor if the campaign is good or bad meaning they can ask why and change things midstream if needed.

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Empowering the team

Qrious has empowered Skinny’s people to ask questions about what is happening through delivery insights on data at speed. Insights provide Skinny the ability to do things other companies cannot. It was a fundamental change for Skinny and how they operate.

The team is asking questions they never would have before which is maximising investment returns.