Profitability and churn management specialist, Emagine, has rolled out the latest version of its software, Emagine v3.0, with AAPT in a deal worth of $2 million. Emagine plans to use the implementation at AAPT, together with another at Telstra-owned CSL Hong Kong, as case studies to show its worth to other carriers in the domestic market as well as in the US, Asia and Europe. AAPT completed a three-month pilot scheme of Emagine v3.0 in December. This concentrated on fixed line services and compared different segments of the carrier’s business including commercial to consumer and high to low customer values. Emagine claimed it resulted in a 25 per cent reduction in customer churn and was now aiming to return similar results as AAPT uses v3.0 to assess the profitability of its relationships with each of an estimated one million customers. The customer relationship management (CRM) product works by calculating customer value down to the profitability of each call. This allows telcos to assess the value of individual customers and formulate marketing campaigns to maximise return. “This solution provides intelligent data about our customers and remembers which offers are most effective in keeping them on board,” AAPT consumer and commercial director, Greg Armstrong, said. “The pilot demonstrated significant reduction in churn and we are confident we will mirror these results in the live rollout,” Armstrong said. Emagine shares his confidence and will hand back a quarter of its contract fee should the implementation fail to live up to expectations. “As markets become more mature, telcos are looking to achieve better returns from existing customers rather than trying to find elusive new marginal business,” Emagine CEO, David Peters, said. “While there has been a backlash in the CRM industry [concerning project failure rates], we have confidence in our ability to get the required runs on the board.” During a survey of 30 global mobile service operators conducted by Emagine, churn rate was listed by businesses as a top-three cause for concern. Peters said the Emagine product was generic and would be relevant to any service industry with long-term customer relationships but that the current business model was geared towards telcos with more than half a million customers. “The next move for us is to establish the product with telcos during the next 12 months before looking into other areas,” Peters said. “It is the nature of Australian companies that you have to focus on niche markets because unlike US competitors you don’t have Fortune 500 companies on your back doorstep.”
