Getting up close and personal-Trust and transparency the Indosat way

“Customers are increasingly skeptical about what they buy, about what operators promise,” laments Indosat CMO Andreas Gregori, referring to the traditionally opaque and fickle Indonesian telecom market. But it’s not just trust that’s an issue in this unique archipelago of 18,307 islands. With 4G in play, data use surging, and the local telecom market at a turning point, Indosat is embarking on an ambitious network modernization scheme that gets closer to customers, builds trust, and delivers the right services at the right time.

Where’s all the trust gone?

With 278 million mobile subscriptions, the Indonesian telecom market is the fourth largest in the world. It’s also a tricky place of business for operators due to a slew of unique features. Hardly anyone has a bank account, almost all subscriptions are prepaid, and micro-transactions comprising daily top ups for voice and data services are the  common modus operandi in this culturally diverse nation. 

According to Gregori, the ingredients are perfect for “a very disloyal market that offers operators very little control [in terms of] selling and brand experience.” Promotion shopping is the norm, churn is high, and retaining high-value customers the same way carriers do in post-paid developed markets is virtually non-existent.

So, how can the telco create a competitive brand experience based on loyalty? First, Gregori is adamant that service packages must be simple and free of designed-in, hidden costs that confuse people: “This is something that’s been built on purpose – or half on purpose. People are very unclear about what they’re being charged for.” He explains that this opacity is why distrust is endemic in the Indonesian market. 

Second, Gregori believes that the daily top-up culture and contact with subscribers – in Indosat’s case 55 million of them – offers a huge opportunity to boost the company’s brand equity, “Digital savvy staff in our physical stores and call centers can help people with installation and anything technical,” he says. 

In this regard, Indosat has a literal way of getting closer to its customers on a daily basis. With the constant stream of new device and service offerings flooding the market, Gregori has observed that, “People have more questions now – how to use this, how to install that. We are a trusted point of contact.”

The third way to build trust is to incorporate technical network solutions that create value for both customers and the telco by, for example, providing “the right offers at the right time” using insights gleaned from big data and the responsiveness of a business enablement suite.

Telling it like it is with 4Gplus

Indosat’s transparent business strategy has helped add 14 million connections over the past two years, and contributed to the doubling of data consumption in 2015. Now that 4G is on the table for the nation’s big three telcos after refarming 1.8 GHz, data and user numbers can only go skyward. 

In response, Indosat’s 4Gplus product offers affordable handsets, low latency, and high speeds for the same price as 3G. Alongside metrics that are meaningful for users, trust and transparency are big parts of Indosat’s move closer to customers: “The ‘plus’ is the extra we provide for the customer”, says Gregori. It’s also about removing tricks and gray areas: “What we promise is what they get.” In the case of 4Gplus, this includes a free trial period of 10 gigabytes so people can experience the new speeds and feel of video streaming and mobile gaming without any bill shocks. 

While some specifics of Indonesia’s communications scene are characteristic of an emerging economy, user habits reveal a nation of keen communicators and tech adopters. Indonesia is home to the world’s fourth most Facebook users, its tweeters are the planet’s fifth most prolific, and “YouTube use is staggering,” says Gregori.

For these digital natives, 4Gplus is hitting home runs with latency and speed. Music and HD videos can be streamed up to 10 times faster than on 3G, and buffering has been eliminated on the video front. Moreover, a 20 MB game can be downloaded in less than 25 seconds, compared to 3G’s leisurely 3 minutes. 

To get closer to customers, Indosat is big on partnerships. On the content side, hot names like Spotify are consumer magnets. To some extent this reflects the indirect consumption model in Indonesia where, according to Gregori, “Operators don’t have their own retail space.” Therefore, partnerships are essential to strengthening brand experience and engendering consumer confidence.  

Networking for success

Gregori is clear that the industry is at a crossroads, with a future that’s not cut and dried and where strong technical solutions are not enough. Strategic partnerships must therefore run deeper than ever before. 

In a time of subscriber gain, 4G, and the rise of video, network modernization under a business partnership with Huawei is a natural step forward. Solutions for big data and Huawei’s Business Enablement Suite (BES) are central to Indosat’s ongoing network modernization project. 

Gregori believes that big data is essential for both generating revenue and retaining customers in Indonesia’s instinctively disloyal market. Big data analytics will help Indosat react faster, and offer the right offer at the right time to prepaid customers to reduce churn. 

At the same time, the management and billing capabilities of the online-centric BES will do what a network-centric BSS cannot do. In an increasingly long-tailed market, the BES is more like a neurodynamic tree, where each of its many leaves act as customer touch point for things like queries, subscriptions, billing, payments, delivery, and cataloging. By cutting time-to-market, the BES unleashes relevant solutions that people need – here Gregori gives the example of mobile insurance from third-party enterprises. 

Mind the gap

A look at Indosat’s colorful website reflects the youthful demographic of Indonesia, where the median age is under 30 and usage patterns reflect a nation that’s young at heart. 

However, Indosat is not all about targeting the young urban hip, with the company having recently publicized its commitment to bridging the digital divide: “This is at the heart of our repositioning, which we announced on October 20 [2015],” states Gregori. As part of this, Indosat aims to offer the nation’s widest 4G coverage in 2016, including remote areas. 

In uncertain times that require the telco’s 3,000 plus staff – and carriers worldwide – to adapt to digital transformation, Indosat is still clear where it’s heading: upgrade its network, expand coverage, kickstart economic activity with CSR, and – in Gregori’s words – provide services that are “accessible, affordable, and fun to explore.” 

Transparency and simplicity can then bring the trust back.