Business Issue
In the mobile communications market, euphoria has given way to sober realism. Telcos are fighting tooth and nail for every last customer to avoid being left behind in the competitive race. So it is no wonder that so many companies agonize over the fickle way in which mobile users flit from provider to provider. However, not so at Austrian mobile network pioneer T-Mobile Austria, wholly owned subsidiary of German telco Deutsche Telekom, where customer orientation has been fueling growth consistently for more than five years.

Underpinning this consistent surge is the marketing solution from Pegasystems.

The recent boom in mobile phones far outstripped anything the Internet had to offer, giving mobile network providers a bonanza of hundreds of thousands of new users a year. However, with the years of plenty now at an end, the industry is nursing its hangove. Customer churn is frighteningly high, and attractive pricing models are no longer a viable means of differentiation.

The only way for telcos to get the edge on the competition is to place the customer squarely in the middle of everything they do and to cultivate long-term, profitable relationships. Take T-Mobile Austria, for instance. The strength of the Austrian GSM network operator lies not only in its mobile network: it also gets top grades for the way it handles customers.