Winning CVM in Fixed Services: From Customer Lifecycle to Data Mart

[00:00:00] Aydin: We established Campaign Management Data Mart. As a result, we reduced the campaign time to market by 40% or maybe 50%. We improved customer engagement in terms of the conversion rates and reduced the churn by a measurable level. CVM was mainly treated as a team, occasionally sending SMS about discounts. Afterwards, when we started delivering real value, people understood that CVM is actually a strategic growth engine.

[00:00:30] Exacaster: Welcome to CVM Stories, the podcast on customer value management. Together, we explore how companies can be more successful and the customer is happier through the use of latest customer value management techniques. Learn key commercial and analytical insights from telecoms, retail, finance and other industries that drive CVM forward.

[00:00:48] Egidijus: Hi, I’m Egidijus, your host. Today our guest is Aydin Ismayilov Head of customer value management at Aztelekom. Aydin shares practical insights on customer value management in fixed services. We will cover customer lifecycle management topics, identification of household cross-sell and building a perfect CVM data mart. So let’s get started. So hi, Aydin. Uh, thank you for joining us today.

[00:01:22] Aydin: Hi, Egidijus. Hi, good day to everyone. Thank you for inviting me. I’m really glad to be part of this conversation.

[00:01:28] Egidijus: Today we will be diving in a lot on customer value management in fixed business. For me, this is a very interesting area because, uh, I don’t have so much hands on experience there. So it’s very interesting to to dig and ask everything in this area. Uh, but, Aydin, before we, uh, uh, go there. Uh, could you tell us or what are you doing right now with what’s your role? And, uh, how did you, uh, came up to this role?

[00:02:02] Aydin: Sure. Uh, I believe I should start from the educational part. Uh, in general, I have a background in international economic relations, but my real passion has always been the product marketing, customer growth and business development in general. Uh, additionally, as the local market started shifting towards data driven decision making, I, uh, made a decision to, uh, enlarge my academic knowledge, theoretical knowledge, and started pursuing my MBA degree in business and data analytics. Uh, as for the uh, specifically telco area, my career started from the front line. I served as a call center agent for local mobile network operator, and I’m quite happy about this since, uh, this is specifically the place where I fully understood undersold what truly matters for customers afterwards I. Over the over the few years I moved to the team called Targeted Marketing. Actually quite similar to CVM. I was busy doing marketing analytics, uh, customer segmentation, some manual campaigns, and eventually I ended up with, uh, management of customer value management, end to end CVM strategy. Uh, later I moved to a little bit more technical part, uh, I managed, uh, data product management, uh, stream, uh, as a data product owner. And in parallel, I was leading data governance initiatives since they are quite, uh, related to each other. Uh, and, uh, as of today, I serve as a head of customer value management function in US Telecom. This is one of the key, uh, local fixed network operators.

[00:03:55] Egidijus: So you’re kind of a classic career of customer value management. Uh, management kind of, uh, going all over the organization, uh, heavily data focused. Yeah.

[00:04:08] Aydin: Yeah, exactly.

[00:04:11] Egidijus: Uh, what I like about your career is that you have touched, uh, many, many things. And, uh, kind of. What did you learn from your, uh, times when you were working as a customer service agent? You know, because this is kind of a, uh, a really interesting, uh, uh, start.

[00:04:30] Aydin: Actually, since this was my first experience in telco in general. Uh, I would say that everything was, uh, very new for me. Uh, in general, this was one of my first, uh, work experience in general and specifically in telco. Uh, what I learned, uh, how the first how big companies These operate. This was the first thing that I learned how. Multiple systems are connected, how the customer journey flow starts. And where does it go afterwards? Uh, the second thing, more specific to my current, um, function, uh, I truly learned the voice of customer. I identify their pain points. And actually, I precisely recall my first job interview while I was switching to marketing. Uh, I remember that, uh, I was really asked a lot of questions about customer experience, how customers really feel themselves, and what are the main pain points. Uh, and this really helped me a lot to, uh, build some kind of updated CVM framework while working, uh, specifically for the communication part. Uh, what I mean, under communication is precise scripts for SMS, for tele sales. I was quite aware of the language the customers speak and the kind of messages we need to design to deliver our promotion effectively and efficiently.

[00:06:05] Egidijus: This is so fascinating. Fascinating. Could you give some examples? Because kind of I feel what you say is the way marketers think and the way customers think are usually are not very the same, you know. Could you give some examples of.

[00:06:21] Aydin: Sure. So one of the examples that I precisely remember that we increased the conversion rates without changes in offer, but with changes in the SMS context. So, um, what I recall from my call center experience that when we, um, let’s say provide some offer to subscribers and when we specify the price before the offer, actually the level of interest may significantly drop because the first thing the customers hear is the price, and afterwards they hear the offer itself, the product, and then they start analyzing whether it’s beneficial or not for them. But since the price is already mentioned, there are something like stick on this. So what actually we changed in CVM, one of the first things that we did is was, was replacing just the place of the product and the price inside the message. Uh, without any change, without any other changes. The conversion rates in average increased by 2 or 3 persons.

[00:07:36] Egidijus: Oh, wow. Sounds like, uh, you know, you you you gained a lot of revenue for free.

[00:07:43] Aydin: Yeah, actually, with no additional costs. Uh, and with no any additional, uh, stimulation or offer.

[00:07:51] Egidijus: That’s amazing. Aydin, what I also like about your career is that you touched both mobile and fixed services, and you know a lot about the data, which is, uh, super cool by design, but, uh, focusing on the CVM piece. Fixed versus mobile. What would you say are kind of the key differences from, uh, the customer value management? Uh, there.

[00:08:18] Aydin: Actually, as a general business, um, the general commercial business, they are quite similar because both of them are related to telco. The product and services portfolio are quite similar, and the customer behavior seem to be similar. Uh, but when it comes for the CVM in fixed and CVM in mobile, I would say they’re totally quite two different games. Uh, and the main difference here comes from the dynamics of interaction with customers. Uh, to be more precise. Uh, fixed broadband services are originally treated and considered by subscribers as something like a utility service. Uh, you, um, let’s compare it with your, let’s say, electricity payment. You pay your bill once a month. Uh, and you forget about this. Uh, the same or the very similar happens with fixed broadband when you have something like you have a router at your home, you have home internet. You pay once a month and you forget about this. You don’t treat your, uh, provider as something special unless your provider starts bringing something special here. Uh, in mobile, uh, since the mobile originally, uh, is much more developed and mature comparing with fixed, uh, subscribers, uh, engage with you much more frequently. And the general engagement and interaction dynamics are, uh, sorry, the interaction is more dynamic. Uh, which is why I would say this is the first challenge for CVM professionals.

[00:10:02] Aydin: Uh, since the less you interact with subscribers, the less data you can get from them. And, uh, more poor you have you have your analysis at the end, uh, which is why, uh, you cannot properly, um, build a customer profile at a micro segmentation level. Uh, sometimes you cannot, uh, design specific offers, again, for specific micro segments. And the main challenge is personalization. Uh, the another difference in CVM, uh, comes when you launch retention activities, In mobile, customers tend to churn quickly. Uh, in fixed customers actually stay longer. And the um, average tenure of subscribers is, uh, longer than comparing with mobile. But when the subscriber in fixed decides to leave, it’s much harder to win them back. Uh, it is disadvantage for existing operator and actually can be considered as an advantage for the operator the subscriber is willing to switch to. Um, uh, this mainly comes from the, um, I would say the process, the complexity of switching from one provider, from one operator to another. Uh, in mobile you can just swap your SIM and that’s it. Um, in the best case, you can just place an online application and everything will be delivered right to you, right to your address, and without any need from your side to go anywhere. Uh, in the worst case, you just need to visit front office once, one time, provide the documents, uh, sign an application, and that’s it.

[00:11:50] Aydin: You. You’re already switched for fixed. You at least need to be home when you switch your provider, because the guys from technical staff will come change the equipment, uh, update the contract, etc.. Uh, that is why, uh, churn in fixed uh, seems to be. Much more complex for subscribers. That is why they, uh, prefer to stay. But as I mentioned, when they decide to leave, it can be too late. Uh, that is why CVM in fixed much, uh, should be, uh, much more proactive, uh, with much more limited data comparing with mobile, uh, coming back to, um, To the differentiation in product portfolio. Uh, originally, fixed providers have some basic services. Uh, like I would say traditional services like, uh, internet or uh, phone. Uh, I would say that, uh, it’s real uh, the real time has come to enlarge the product portfolio with additional services like, uh, content. It can be okay. It can be video on demand. Uh, even some providers have personal cloud solutions. Uh, that is actually quite cheaper and with the same functionality as global cloud providers. Uh, considering that we currently live in artificial intelligence era, uh, there are quite a lot of, uh, AI based products that are provided by fixed broadband providers. Uh, Specifically if I don’t make a mistake.

[00:13:39] Aydin: Huawei provides this, uh, offer that you can, uh, purchase an AI hub device installed at your apartment, and you have a lot of enhancements using AI. It can be video quality enhancement. It can be even AI fitness. Uh, you have personal AI coach, uh, right at home. Uh, and by the way, quite popular service is video surveillance, when you can get both, uh, the device for video surveillance and the cloud for storing these videos, these recordings. So this, that, uh, these are the examples of how the fixed, uh, product portfolio can be enriched, uh, in order to shift the mindset from utility service provider to, uh, up to date, um, modern, uh, commercial services. One more. One more thing I want to touch. Comparing CVM and fix on mobile is about the campaigns. Uh, not even the campaigns themselves, but about their analysis. Uh, if we talk about the analysis methodology, my personal favorite methodology is, uh, RCT, which stands for randomized control trials or control group methodology in a simple language. Um, so the methodology is the same, but the analysis period significantly differs between mobile and fixed campaigns. Uh, since, uh, the as I mentioned, that interaction dynamics is, uh, slower in fixed. You need to analyze your campaigns for a longer period to measure the real impact of your campaigns on customer behavior changes.

[00:15:25] Aydin: Uh, which is why for, uh, let’s say a general upsell campaign for mobile can be analyzed through two or maybe three weeks for fixed. It can take even several months. Uh, and the, um, coming back to the control group selection. Um, actually, they are selected quite the same. These are the basic statistical rules everywhere. Uh, we apply stratified sampling for selecting control groups. Uh, but the variables that we rely on, uh, during selection of the strata, also differ for mobile. This, uh, one of the most popular and relevant variable, uh, along with, let’s say, our tariff plan and so on, can be, uh, dynamic location changes, uh, of subscribers that can be used as one of the differentiators, uh, between various groups. For fixed you can just you cannot just logically apply this because the location does not change usually. Uh, it happens occasionally when And subscribers, uh, change their apartments. But, uh, as a standard rule, the location is fixed. That is why the variables also differ. So overall, I would say that CVM in ethanol is slower in terms of the pace. But this is much more strategic game. Um, it um, definitely. Quick wins are always acceptable and they are, uh, relevant and they are crucial. But CVM and fix uh more relies on long term or long term relationship with customers.

[00:17:09] Egidijus: So I didn’t you, uh, you touched like, four different, uh, uh, aspects, uh, which are all very, very interesting and important. And, uh, now, what I would like to do is I would like to go a bit deeper into those because these are super fascinating. So first aspect is customer lifecycle management is very different in fixed services compared to mobile, because in mobile you have a lot of kind of um, the onboarding is super simple and then all the game is about upsell and cross-sell, upsell, cross-sell, and then kind of, uh, some retention. Yeah. So uh, but in uh, fixed services, it’s, it’s way different. Yes. It’s like uh, uh, so if I understand correctly, kind of the first game is to do a proper onboarding. Yes. Because it’s kind of, uh, it’s a very expensive operation for the customer. It’s like, uh, you are switching and, uh, the person needs to come, and then you need to provide a good service and set up, uh, the router. Yeah. Everything. Uh, so, so what are the aspects there in the onboarding piece. And then I would like to touch a bit, uh, on this uh uh, upsell and prolongation maybe.

[00:18:37] Aydin: Mhm. Okay. Uh, if we talk about the specifically the onboarding process and assuming the subscriber mainly uses internet service, which is, uh, the most popular service for fixed providers. Um, the first thing, as you mentioned, starts during the installation. Um, as a CVM, our main touchpoint with customers during the onboarding stage start is, uh, starts, uh, approximately 2 or 3 days, maybe a week later after the installation, uh, when we just, uh, drop an SMS. Uh, and afterwards, by the way, we also call this is something like, um, NPS check, uh, to, uh, identify whether there are any issues and you just to, let’s say, handshake with customer to make sure that everything is okay. Uh, the another point here, um, maybe specifically relevant to Azerbaijan. We have recently completed the online Azerbaijan project, uh, which which, uh, main aim was to cover the whole country territory with Japan, with fiber optic network. And, uh, the main advantage for subscribers, uh, along with much more stable connection and so on is the speed of this connection. And, um, there is some technical limitations in some routers that unless you have, uh, five years, uh, um, frequency, you, you most probably won’t be able to get the speed that you can get from your provider. And unfortunately, here comes the main challenge of education of subscribers, since not everyone knows, even these technical details, that you can change your frequency directly from the router itself. And if you don’t do this, ultimately you can get the lower speed that was promised initially, initially. And it is direct effect to your MPs loyalty and so on. That is why onboarding stage for us is mainly educational part where we don’t have any, uh, usually don’t provide any specific offers to subscribers. We just keep contact with them, making sure that no any trouble happens. And we periodically educate them about these speed issues, about how they can test their, uh, verify their network using various speed test sites and so on.

[00:21:13] Egidijus: And I didn’t at this stage, do you have, uh, let’s say, any data available? Kind of. Can you check from your side? What is the promised speed to the client and what is their average, what they get or something like that. Or this is like, uh, it’s impossible.

[00:21:29] Aydin: We have, uh, recently started exploring some data in terms of the connection, uh, in terms of the speed, latency, uh, which actually, uh, can be served as some kind of trigger for us to make these calls. Uh, additionally, we definitely verify, uh, appeals to call center from, uh, from subscribers directly. So, uh, something like we combine these two reports, these two data sets, and identify real cases. Um, and, uh, as you mentioned, these reports are originally provided by the, uh, router installation installations. I mean, the network issues reports.

[00:22:16] Egidijus: Okay. And, uh, one more question is like, uh, because this is a Challenging thing for me as well. I treat myself as, let’s say, a highly technical guy. I can write some code, etc. etc. but when it comes to going and configuring my router, it’s such a pain.

[00:22:36] Aydin: That’s the main challenge there.

[00:22:38] Egidijus: And the question is, how do you, uh, educate your customers how to do it?

[00:22:45] Aydin: Actually, I believe that the vast majority of customers are, uh, very similar to you. Uh, they can they can do a lot. But when it comes to simple configuration, it’s quite challenging. Uh, which is why we instruct our installers to do everything on behalf of customers. Uh, so, um, they they really install everything. They connect everything. They, uh, set the password. Definitely. They tell, uh, this password to customers. And the only thing they teach them how to switch on and switch off this router or TV device if they need. Uh, so, uh, we try to, um, be much efficient as we can and not to overload subscribers with additional installation. The only thing they need to do, actually, is to be home when we come. And, uh, to see the process, to understand, to ask the questions, to sign the contract and that’s it. So we try not to keep anything on the customer side for configuration.

[00:23:54] Egidijus: Mhm. Okay. Okay. Good good. Good. Then uh I would uh then the next piece is uh, the, the other stage of life cycle. As you said it’s slow. Usually I think uh, if we talk about the core subscription. Yeah. So that whether it would be like a broadband subscription or a TV subscription. So there you you have probably contract life cycles. And at the end of contract lifecycle you try to prolong the contract or upgrade the contract. Yeah. So kind of uh, and here, uh, how how does the process look here?

[00:24:34] Aydin: Yeah. Uh, here, actually, the real game begins since, um, this is, um, the main, I would say upsell and cross-sell stage. And in some cases, uh, this is the retention stage. In general, our customer lifecycle management is divided into five main stages. The first is onboarding then growth maturity. And something opposite to this when we have retention and uh churn ultimately. So uh main uh upsell and cross-sell activities are concentrated on the growth stage of the. Com process. For the maturity stage, we usually apply um, loyalty offering and um, some um down down sales and cross sales are applied usually for retention and churn management. So, um, this is exactly where we start. Uh, when, when the contract, uh, assumed to be prolonged there, uh, we start upsell and cross-sell activities, but, uh, everything is firstly analyzed to identify the exact micro segment, uh, where this customer belongs to, belongs to and what offer should be made here. Um, one more point where regarding the difference between, um, mobile and fixed here, uh, relies on the part that actually when we analyze the subscriber, we don’t analyze one person only because we analyze the household, uh, in mobile, one subscriber ID belongs to one person. This is quite easy to understand.

[00:26:20] Aydin: When you analyze a subscriber, you actually analyze a household, usually containing of a family consisting of three four members of different age group, different gender, and basically different preferences. Uh, but you have only one chance to offer. You have only one offer to be sent to this customer. And this should fit all of these family members, and all of them should utilize it, utilize it, and be happy about this. That is why the segmentation and the approach to offering is a little bit different here. We need to design something more unified, uh, that is applicable to all of these members. Uh, if we talk about specific examples. Actually, this is not a rocket science. Uh, it can be, depending on the data that we observe. We can, uh, offer subscribers to upgrade to the tariff plan with higher speed. Uh, specifically, it can be applicable for gamers. Uh, when you need higher speed, when you need, uh, much low latency, uh, ping. Um, the another option can be providing additional services like let’s say this subscriber is using internet only. Uh, but you feel that they might be interested in some content services. You can offer them, uh, IPTV, any OTT and so on. Mhm.

[00:28:01] Egidijus: So, uh, I didn’t this was exactly my next question. So you kind of guessed you answered before I gave that question. Yeah.

[00:28:12] Aydin: To provide examples.

[00:28:13] Egidijus: Yeah, but that’s super cool. The key aspect, which I understand about, uh, the is the customer definition. It’s totally different in fixed. Yes. Yeah. And your customer now is a household and.

[00:28:31] Aydin: Exactly.

[00:28:32] Egidijus: Um, so if the, let’s say contract prolongation or renewal process, it’s pretty straightforward. Yeah. So you, you you, the thing that you can do is like, either give a bigger speed or give a new technology or cross-sell another core service like IPTV. But when we go to deeper cross-sell and where we have all these other strange products like security, information security services, uh, webcams to track things, um, uh, Oat for, let’s say, um, uh, for content, for specific content, for families, for sport, sports packages, etc. this becomes a super interesting piece. How do you handle this part and how do you know, uh, what is the household? What what is the composition of the household or how do you how do you get that? There’s not a single person, even though we all know that’s not a single person.

[00:29:36] Aydin: Uh, the first identifier here. Yeah. Uh, I believe it can be the data traffic amount that is consumed. Uh, the the additional identifier can be the count of devices connected to the router. And, um, these, uh, actually, these two variables, uh, are more or less enough to have at least basic understanding of what happens in the household.

[00:30:02] Egidijus: So do you understand correctly. So, for example, you can basically count how many mobile devices are constantly connected, and you pretty much know the size of the household. Is it the kind of. Uh.

[00:30:18] Aydin: Uh. Yes. What? What? Uh, I, um. Let me more precise here. In this case, uh, the first, uh, source of this information are subscribers themselves. So, uh, when we ask when we, um, when they join us, we make some kind of service regarding how many people would be used. Uh, maybe based on their answers, we would recommend them, uh, additional services. Or, for instance, let’s say if we see that the house size is quite big, we inform subscribers that the internet connection may be quite slow in some specific areas of this apartment or house. And in this case, we offer additional devices, uh, called mesh. Uh, they are required for, um, strengthening the network. What comes for the additional data, uh, that we generate? Actually, we don’t generate it. We get it from our, uh, routers. Uh, yes. In some cases, we can see the count of devices that are connected to these routers. Uh, but we have just recently started exploring these data sets, which is why I’m not fully sure about the full information they, they can, um, provide to us and the real benefits they can provide to us. Uh, and the same with, uh, as you told, we can also offer some cross-sell with OTT or maybe video surveillance. And so unfortunately, these products are currently not available in our product portfolio. Um, they are currently not available in our country in general. And this is the main idea that I’m trying to work on. Um, that fixed broadband services actually not only in Azerbaijan, but also I think in most countries need to, uh, implement these services to avoid this treatment of being utility service providers.

[00:32:24] Exacaster: If you are interested in customer value management, check out our Customer Value Management Body of Knowledge. CVMBoK is a comprehensive guide for CVM professionals offering tips, tools, and best practices to help you in your job. Visit cvmbok.com for more.

[00:32:40] Egidijus: What I like about your solution is that in this kind of in the sales during the sales stage, you already collect the information about the household because kind of this is where majority of the companies struggle, uh, with this information and uh, probably the best solution that they, uh, that I have seen is actually Netflix. Uh, because when you connect to Netflix, you basically build the profiles for yourself or let’s say, a wife or children. And this is kind of they by design their product, uh, uh, finds how to identify.

[00:33:22] Aydin: Actually, I observed a similar trend in Spotify. When you select the desired artists or channels, and your recommendations are much more personalized afterwards.

[00:33:35] Egidijus: Yeah. Yeah. And this actually helps to build to understand the household composition, where then you can actually start building there. Yeah. This is uh, a super, super interesting thing. So if I understand correctly, at this point of time, you’re only building this expanded product portfolio, am I correct?

[00:33:57] Aydin: Yeah, exactly. Currently we have, um, the, let’s say, first layer of product portfolio that consists of traditional services and, uh, the CVM in fixed is quite new in our local market, uh, actually, where the same, uh, sorry, uh, where the single company that has a separate dedicated CVM team in fixed provider in Azerbaijan. But, um, these, uh, this area is very, very quickly improving. And, uh, a lot of experience is actually, uh, gathered from mobile. Um, yeah. Which is why it is quite, uh, obvious and logical to start from the first layer, from traditional services, to apply the experience that, uh, already, uh, captured from mobile to check the differences, by the way, uh, the differences in conversion rates and customer behavior in some, um, preferences of subscribers, and afterwards, based on the lessons learned, based on the based on the experience of, uh, campaign results. We can move to, uh, brand new offers like, uh, videos, Reliance Cloud and so on.

[00:35:16] Egidijus: Mhm. Okay. Uh, some, uh, sounds very exciting stage. Um, I didn’t, uh. So, uh, from your career. So you learned a lot from being in customer service. Basically, you understood the voice of customer very well. Yeah. Another piece was, uh, your detour to data management and data product management, etc.. What did you learn from there and transferred to your CVM? Uh, part?

[00:35:49] Aydin: The main reason why I transferred to data products was, uh, my desire to look into the data from the other side. Uh, so, um, this is a common, let’s say, uh, confrontation between technical teams and commercial teams. And I always was interested about what happens, actually in the place where data is, let’s say, created. Uh, but I didn’t want to lose my, um, commercial activities, which is why the data product management was, I would say, the ideal point, ideal place where I can still keep my commercial activities and at the same time dive deep to the data, uh, origins themselves. Um, in general, I would say that, uh, traditionally data in, uh, a lot of organizations, including telco, was treated as an IT asset. Uh, this is something that you store, protect, uh, sometimes enlarge And occasionally useful reports. But when you start it. When you start treating data as a product, the mindset completely shifts. So you start by asking, what reports can we build? And you start asking, what value can we bring to business using this data? Um, what decisions can we make using this data? And this is exactly the moment when, um, the data teams stop being, uh, stop having support roles and, uh, move to, uh, being real business value creators. Uh, in general, what I think, uh, is required for being a successful data product owner is, uh, a combination of a few skills. Uh, the first is data literacy.

[00:37:47] Aydin: Uh, but I don’t mean specifically coding here. Coding is definitely an advantage. It would bring additional success, but I wouldn’t add it to the category of minimum requirements. What I mean under data literacy is general understanding of data processes, of data management steps, how the data is created, how it’s stored, when it’s transferred afterwards, and how it is utilized. And uh, additionally, what I mean under data literacy is basic understanding of theoretical parts of data, uh, at least descriptive statistics. Um, the second skill that is required to be successful product owner is, uh, the business acumen. Definitely. You need to explicitly understand, uh, you need to make high level Swot analysis. You need to understand your strengths, weaknesses, define the opportunities. And uh, obviously threats, uh, understand the use cases, how you can apply them, where you can apply them. Will we apply them only inside your organization? Or you can develop a product that can be sold to third party partners as a ready product. Um, and by the way, this is the last skill set that is required for person to be a product. Thinking. Uh, to have the product mindset, uh, you need to explicitly understand, uh, the product management cycle starting from the uh, idea generation part, uh, moving to the technical feasibility check, business feasibility check, uh, technical implementation at actually launch and post launch monitoring. So these are, uh, I would say the crucial skill sets for data product owner.

[00:39:40] Egidijus: Okay. And from your experience with data products, or what did you, uh, bring into your CVM work.

[00:39:50] Aydin: I’m not sure about, uh, whether I should link specifically these products with CVM. Uh, rather, I can say that, uh, this experience helped me a lot to understand what kind of data is available in general, uh, and what kind of data can be used afterwards for CVM as well. Um, let me firstly, uh, provide a difference between there is a common misconception between data products and data as a product. Actually they are quite similar and they are often used as the same understandings. But there is one significant difference between them. Uh, a data product is a solution built using data, uh, like let’s say a churn model which can be applied in CVM or this can be lead scoring tool. This is also data product that can be applied in CVM. When we say about data as a product, it is about managing the data itself as a product. Making sure that it is clean, reliable, consistent and accurate enough to be used for business use cases. Um, moving to the specific examples of data products or data as a product. Uh, I can conditionally categorize them into two groups. The first are more basic in terms of the technical implementation. Uh, but this doesn’t mean that they are less valuable. Uh, as I mentioned, it can be a credit risk scoring model.

[00:41:32] Aydin: It can be lead generation tool. It can be, uh, advertisement platform. Um, you can apply AI there or launch these products without any application of AI using just rule based modeling. Blink. The second group actually consists of products that heavily rely on artificial intelligence, and these products can be developed both for internal use and be developed and sold to third parties as a ready product. As an example, the most popular one is AI chatbot uh to improve customer service, uh, and reduce costs. The second is uh can be the second example can be optical character recognition OCR, uh, for let’s say for scanning documents, uh, and so on. Uh, and uh, one more example that I precisely recall. One of the successful projects is face recognition model face detection, face recognition used in any cases in sorry, in a lot of cases. Uh, so these projects and these products are a part of data product management scope that can be used some kind of in some cases for CVM as well, and can be used as a separate products. The only thing, the only main condition is proper data governance in terms of the data quality, in terms of the proper storage and obviously, uh, legislative, uh, compliance.

[00:43:15] Egidijus: Um, so, uh, I didn’t I can make a bet that your CVM Data Mart is, uh, as clean as it can get. Yeah.

[00:43:27] Aydin: We try it as much as possible, I think. Yes, exactly.

[00:43:34] Egidijus: Fantastic. So, uh, from, uh, here, we will start moving to wrap up questions that we always ask our guests. So first question is all about your career highlights. What would be, uh, what project, uh, would you single out as your best achievement in your career?

[00:43:58] Aydin: If we talk about. Some specific campaign or offer, I wouldn’t say that I have some kind of distinguishing offer that made a huge success comparing with another product. Uh, I would rather focus on the project, as you mentioned. Um, one of my proudest achievements, I would say, is, um, managing and launching the CVM automation for, uh, for several years, several years of hard work and dedication. Uh, it was quite challenging project, uh, because we fully automated the CVM processes. And, um, the moment of happiness is specific to us because we faced a lot of challenges before and during the implementation. Uh, before that, we, uh, literally had nothing. Um, the campaign management was fully manual. In some specific cases, we had some semi-automated solutions, but in, uh, vast majority of cases, it was manual. Uh, the campaign analysis was done through Excel manually, and we had quite poor targeting since, uh, a lot of business critical variables were not just available for us. They were stored some somewhere, some, uh, in some kind, but we were not able to get them, uh, which is why we, uh, decided to fully automate the process by implementing, actually, not only the campaign management module, but also the data analytics module and also the campaign analysis module.

[00:45:36] Aydin: So end to end CVM process was automated. And as you mentioned about Datamart, we, uh, established uh CMM, which stands for Campaign Management Data Mart, containing, uh, I would say more than 500 variables, uh, either on real time level or aggregated through multiple layers like daily, weekly or monthly. Um, as a result, we gained real success in terms of the commercial KPI. We reduced the campaign time to market, I would say by 40% or maybe 50%. We improved customer engagement in terms of the conversion rates and reduced the churn by a measurable level. Uh, but one also thing that I want to highlight here, um, the main success is not actually the figures. The main success is a mindset shift that we observed in our colleagues in, uh, in, in a lot of people working with us because previously, if CVM was mainly treated as a team of guys occasionally sending SMS about discounts, uh, afterwards when we started delivering real value, uh, people understood that CVM is actually a strategic growth engine.

[00:47:01] Egidijus: Oh. This is a real milestone.

[00:47:06] Aydin: Yeah, I would say so.

[00:47:09] Egidijus: Next to the highlights always goes some, uh, low lights. Uh, in the career, could you share, uh, a failure story or two from your side?

[00:47:20] Aydin: Yeah.

[00:47:21] Aydin: Uh, here, actually, I, I can mention some specific campaign that was a total failure for me. Uh, it was the the times when I started, uh, I even hadn’t had a year of experience in CVM. And one of the campaigns, uh, didn’t bring actually any, uh, any result. Uh, but by the way, before, uh, talking about this, I would like to ask you a question. I’m interested in how you would respond to this campaign. So suppose that you are a subscriber and you get two offers, but you need to select just one of them. Uh, the first offer says to you that you need to pay. Um, actually, it doesn’t matter. Let’s say, uh, €10 to get a 20 GB pack. Uh, the second offer says to you that you need to spend €10 from your balance on anything. You can purchase voice, additional service, anything, and ultimately you will get this 1020 GB pack. Which offer would you choose?

[00:48:24] Egidijus: Uh, of course. Second one.

[00:48:27] Aydin: Okay. Uh. You’re right. This is much more.

[00:48:31] Egidijus: Because it’s like free.

[00:48:33] Aydin: Yeah, exactly. So actually, you spend your €10 on something else that you need. And on top of this, you get your 20 GB pack. Uh, you, uh, I believe you are thinking as a significantly rational person. And also I thought exactly like this. And I precisely recall from my university years that marketing theory also says that this offer would be much more beneficial for subscribers. Uh, my failure was in ignoring the psychology of people, maybe local people. I’m not sure whether it’s this example can be applied worldwide, but I at least, uh, by the way, what I remember that my senior colleagues warned me that my idea won’t bring any significant result. So, uh, I also launched the second offer with spend and get logic. And a lot of people did not react to it. Actually, uh, if I don’t make a mistake, even control group was reacting better. I mean, performing better. Uh, the main reason behind this is actually that, uh, there are quite a lot of people that, uh, don’t need anything else right now except this, uh, pack, and they don’t have a clue about where they can spend their €10. So in the best case, they will spend two today, let’s say three tomorrow, maybe for the day after tomorrow. And they will get their pack 2 or 3 days later. But they need it right now and they don’t need anything else. That is why, uh, despite the second offer, is actually much more beneficial for subscribers. The first offer provides you with an opportunity to get it right now, specifically, uh, at the moment when you need this, uh, and this is the very interesting lesson learned for me personally that, uh, human psychology that maybe local human psychology should never be ignored. When you launch some targeted campaigns, uh, and now when we launch something brand new, we always test with small portion of groups before going big.

[00:50:48] Egidijus: Mhm. But I would like to reflect on, on your campaign because the insight is really, really deep, kind of uh, the uh, because the offer is, super beneficial for the user, but it says that you need to do some behavioral change and you will get a reward later.

[00:51:12] Aydin: Yeah.

[00:51:14] Egidijus: And it seems even though the reward is really good. Yeah.

[00:51:19] Aydin: If you need it right now, you won’t track your spending. Let’s say.

[00:51:25] Egidijus: Uh. Exactly. And then it’s impossible. Well, it’s very hard to change the behaviour of people. Yeah. Yeah. So that’s, uh, uh, really, really, really, uh, interesting insight. Um, and I didn’t so, uh, the, the other thing which I want to understand, how do you learn, how do you offer for people who want to be customer value managers, how to become great professionals? You know.

[00:51:55] Aydin: How to become great CVM manager. I want to highlight your book here. Uh, I don’t want to flatter you, but CVM Body of Knowledge is really, uh, an asset for a person who is already in CVM. Who or who is very interested in CVM. Uh, this mainly comes, uh, from the reason that actually, I, uh, for the last couple of years, I am really, really searching for a book. Uh, for some, let’s say, Theoretical knowledge that can enhance my own experience and the experience of my team. Uh, especially from international markets. And, uh, frankly speaking, I found nothing. Uh, specifically related to CVM and especially related to CVM and telecommunications. Uh, unfortunately, I haven’t explored the book fully yet, but, uh, I looked through all the chapters to read some of them attentively. By the way, what I like the most is, uh, household level cross-selling. This is obvious because I am dealing with, uh, households and, uh, CVM, um, uh, models canvas, I think, uh, this was the name of this chapter, uh, designed for retention, for loyalty and so on. These are the two parts which I like the most from this body of knowledge. Yeah. So I really recommend this because there is no any. At least I haven’t found any other Or alternative, that is, uh, which is why this book is a real asset here. Uh, additionally, I learned a lot from, uh, various podcasts, uh, and movies, by the way. Uh, when I choose a movie, I try to choose something, uh, not maybe directly related to my career, but at least something. What I will learn from something I can learn from this movie. Maybe historical or related to economical topic. I can highlight, uh, a movie that I very like. It’s called A big Shot. Uh, it’s about the financial crisis, uh, emerged in 2008, in USA and then spread, uh, nearly global. Uh, it’s not about CVM at all, but it is about, uh, data. It’s about investments, risks, human behavior. Uh, and these actually can be directly linked to CVM.

[00:54:25] Egidijus: I think this is a very interesting, uh, point. Like, actually, uh, movies are really, really good learning material if you’re.

[00:54:34] Aydin: If you’re training and learning at the same time.

[00:54:38] Egidijus: Yeah. And, uh, I have the last question. We are on a mission to make customer value managers famous. You know, so I didn’t. How how can we make them famous?

[00:54:51] Aydin: Uh, I would say this is the most challenging question of today. Uh, because, uh, I don’t have a precise answer on this. I struggle the same, uh, myself as well. Um, I think we need to, um, let’s say divide our actions into two directions. The first is making famous, uh, making CBMM famous inside our organizations. The second is making famous to all the audience, to all the business audience of our world. When we talk about the first part, um, as I mentioned. Actually we need to explicitly mention what real business results CVM brings to the organization. Uh, in some cases, I observed some, um, people reporting about the number of campaigns they manage or the number of subscribers they actually touch target. Uh, but what I can personally say, from my experience, no one cares about this. No one cares how many campaigns you run unless you have direct effect on the commercial KPIs of your organization. So, uh, the main point is to, uh, show the value, uh, but not through the numbers, but maybe more through the stories, the stories about the, uh, real customers who stay longer, who spend more, uh, have better experience comparing to their previous experience and ultimately end up with having more, uh, customer lifecycle value.

[00:56:31] Aydin: Uh, if we talk about the education of people, uh, of all the business world and making even famous there, I think the education is the main part here. And, um, I don’t talk about the education in terms of academic knowledge. It can be applied, by the way, as well. It can be, uh, part of any MBA program. Uh, but what I, uh, talk about, um, educating people about what is CVM and how they can join CVM because currently when people hear CVM, firstly, they don’t even know about this when when they start exploring. For the vast majority of people, it can seem quite challenging. And, um, they may be afraid of joining customer management initiatives, but what we need to explicitly explain to people is that customer value management is something like a bridge between data analytics and product management or marketing. So either you are a data analytics analytics person or you are a marketing specialist with no special knowledge and data. You can join and start. You just need to have an analytical mindset and a little bit of business acumen. If you have two of these skill sets, it’s enough to start in CVM and join our mission to make CVM more famous.

[00:58:03] Exacaster: CVM Stories is produced by Exacaster. We help companies take their customer value management to the next level. To stay updated on our latest episodes, subscribe to the podcast or sign up for an email newsletter at exacaster.com/cvmstories .