Prepaid market sectors are now flattening under competitive pressure from the attractive service bundles available to residential VoIP and prepaid Wireless subscribers. To retain revenues and remain competitive, an increasingly significant portion of prudent prepaid service providers are considering expanding into new and more attractive postpaid service bundles that reflect many of the best benefits of residential VoIP and wireless packages. But now, more than ever, prepaid service providers need to retain their customers, yet they also need to control their credit exposure and carefully manage risk, and are understandably cautious in evaluating and approaching this service expansion strategy.

If this is your challenge, then you know that your current prepaid consumers are generally easier to sell to, and otherwise great candidates for new services, but they often present a real problem: they’re credit challenged. With the right service bundles and management features, you can manage your risk exposure while turning these consumers into loyal, recurring subscribers.

 

Integrating Credit Limit Monitoring Services

Another service option worth considering, Credit Limit Monitoring (CLM), may be ideal if you’re working from a flexible IP service delivery platform. Credit Limit Monitoring is just that: a way to closely monitor and control the amount of credit extended to an individual customer, at a defined per-minute charge.

CLM services can be extremely adaptable, allowing service providers to either move individuals and classes of subscribers away from prepaid per-minute charges, or supplant their existing per-minute changes with a set of tightly-defined and/or open-ended bundles of minutes that the subscriber then consumes.

There are several advantages to the CLM model: it builds otherwise un-tethered subscribers into loyal subscribers, and it can be tied to home and ANI-based services, wireless phones, etc.

Most importantly, CLM creates a strong middle-ground service for credit challenged customers. Where post paid service customers typically have no major credit concerns and prepaid customers are subject to strict credit controls, CLM enables a soft-limit with thresholds, notifications and numerous service provider re-provisioning options.

Prepaid Service Provider-Defined Top-Up Options: CLM-based services can be defined and delivered on a class-of-risk basis or even by individual customer. Depending on the SP’s preference, as decremented minutes approach the maximum defined level, the service provider can cap the consumer’s service, notifying subscribers of an approaching threshold and subsequently terminating service once the bundle of minutes per billing cycle is exhausted. Or they can allocate to the subscriber a once-per-billing-cycle post paid re-provisioning, or consider potentially allowing subscribers to top up a post paid service a second or third time, but with prepaid minutes. The service provider can even alter the service terms to charge more (or less) for minutes over the first pre-defined bundle.

Family Plan and Business Service Variations: CLM services give the service provider new market opportunities. For international calling customers, the service provider can offer conference calling that decrements minutes as a total, and can rate and charge the subscriber separately for each call leg. Accounts can be tied to multiple handsets, with separate rates for home and cell usage. For small businesses or families (such as those with heavy LD or international calling) that want to define and limit individual call-out privileges, an internal agent can manage individual minutes consumption more effectively via CLM. These and other service variations closely reflect the consumer benefits of popular residential VoIP and prepaid wireless plans, with the added benefit of portability because the services are useable on any phone.

Higher Value Consumer Privileges: In these times, service providers can attract consumers seeking to establish or re-establish credit. By reporting their usage and, over time, rewarding on-time payments with the opportunity to provision additional minutes per billing cycle, prepaid service providers can offer their subscribers more than just minutes.

CLM is similar in many ways to some popular wireless plans in that it gets away from price-per-minute and instead charges by minute bundles consumed. It offers many of the same consumer and service provider benefits: convenience, customer loyalty and expansion opportunity.

If you are working with an IP-based service delivery platform, consider expanding both post paid and CLM-based services to your service product mix.



Ken Osowski is the VP of Marketing & Product Management at Pactolus Communications Software. He can be reached at keno@pactolus.com.