Are Missed Calls Your Missed Opportunities? Learn Dry Facts.

It was the end of last year. I was asked to prepare a description for one of our products called Missed Calls Alerts. Not that we don’t have one. We just wanted to update to a better version.

A good news for me was that we hired a new girl to help me with writing and I though it would be a good first task for her. She did fine as to describing but…

What is the real selling point for this service, I asked myself?

(For those unfamiliar, the service sends an SMS to a subscriber who was unavailable to take the call about missed calls (who, when, how many times). The service can be extended to send SMS to both parties (the caller and the called), to send SMSes as if from the called party so it is easier for the called to call back, to identify callers from the phone book, etc.)

Well, right off the top of my head, I thought we shall be looking at at least 1 percent ARPU increase.

And you know, that’s what I found asking people from all over the world. But it is really good news! Because it means that every operator should have it (the cost of the solution compared to the benefits says: GET IT!)

And indeed, this product is rather common in mobile-developed parts of the world (meaning NOT the US).

Below are answers to my question about the service on a LinkedIn VAS Professional group:

1) Where it is used:

Felipe Huete, Founder and CEO at MZZO Chile S.A.

Here in Chile we have the service, it works quite well. I don’t have numbers but operators consider it a key service.

Ronen Mense, Interactive Mobile Channels – Mobile Marketing, Advertising, Search

I’ve seen this service here in Thailand for a few years, quite common in fact, and I believe its operator centric. Yet to see what Felipe mentioned as the addition of VAS ads, this is a great ad inventory… Would love to get some of that ad inventory!!

Refik Naccur, VAS project expert/Norconsult Telematics/at STC Kuwait “VIVA”

Talking about the MCA service in the Middle East, it is know in different names like IClip, Super Clip, Majoud “Which means: I am present” and so on. … Any way, this service is very common is the Middle East and I believe it is very essential service for the operators in the area …

Bartlomiej Chmielewski, Product Manager at PTK Centertel

Hi everyone! I’m a Product Manager for MCA-like services in Poland. I do confirm that MCA as well as Notify Me services as performing well and have a great accommodation on the market.

Frederic Ankaoua, VAS Account Manager at Comverse

Hi Ivan, I’m an account manager in Comverse and we have more than 140 operators worldwide providing this service.

Ankur Srivastava (ankur.srivastava31@gmail.com), Product Manager – Cellebrum Technologies Limited

Hi, I have implemented MCA (only called party) for one of the largest operator in India.

2) Now, let’s talk numbers. In order to calculate, we need several statistics and assumptions. That’s what people have contributed:

Bartlomiej Chmielewski, Product Manager at PTK Centertel

In terms of numbers I can say the ‘twins’ [MCA + Notify Me (when user available) - I.K.] can increase your MoU by 10-15% and I have it confirmed with numbers.

Frederic Ankaoua, VAS Account Manager at Comverse

I can tell you that figures from some Western European customers show that there is between 15 to 20% call return due to the Missed Call service.

Raul Castanon, Experienced Product Management / Product Marketing Professional

Typically I built the business case with estimate 10 to 15% which I think is a realistic rate of call return. … Statistics from different operators that have deployed missed call alert support an average of 12% call return.

Ankur Srivastava (ankur.srivastava31@gmail.com), Product Manager – Cellebrum Technologies Limited

No. of messages recvd by the subscriber in a day – 4 (avg)

Calls made after receiving of message – 50-60%

Service Penetration – 10-12%
Price point – INR 15 = 30 cents
Business Model – Revenue Share/ Managed Service with the vendor

Dmitry Mezentsev, Head of VAS R&D, CBOSS

We have in stats 10% of incoming calls that can be notified only by means of MCA and about 40% of call returns which gave 4% total calls increase.
The only question here is service penetration which is in spite of MCA is free is not 100% but sometimes only 5% (we had such a case).
So taking in consideration fair 25% penetration (or 10-12% like in Ankur case) we’ll get 0.5-1%, but it’s really great figure for such a service.

My summary will be the following:

Besides the incomplete voice mails and unreachable, our statistics show that out of 100% sent MCAs only a third are delivered (within one day, that’s the lifespan of the service here in Russia’s MTS). Also we have 100% penetration since the service is on by default.Also: what would be a percent of missed calls in general? I saw 40% somewhere but this seems too high. With our service always on, we have the *perfect* number of about 10% of all calls that are missed and alerted of. Of which, only a third of MCAs are delivered within one day, thus we have a 3% potential increase in voice traffic. If we combine this with Raul’s 12% call back stats, we get 0.3% increase in ARPU. I think the return rate is three times higher (about 40%) thus we have a 1% increase in calls. Thus an estimate of 1/2 – 1 % increase in ARPU as compared to the situation of no such service seems to be a pretty good approximation.

However, this calculation assumes that the calls made after the alert (let’s call them “MCA calls”) would have not happened otherwise (i.e. without the alert). It seems to be a pretty restrictive assumption and it depends on how impulsive and important were the calls. Would they have happened in any case? Let’s hypothesize: I think about a half of MCA calls are a pure increase (impulsive, non-important), whereas the other half would be made anyway (called until one delivers the important message).

We then get a 1/2 percent increase… within the (lower) range of others, seems reasonable altogether.

To make it sweeter and to support the proud name of a marketer, I would say (because of all other assumptions which can take on higher values as well) 0.5-1 percent ARPU increase. Viola!

(Of course, there are additional complications like minute-bundles: may be that’s the reason why the US does not need this service — they probably care for LESS MoU for unlim plans)

USSD Services from All Over the World

Dozens of people from all around the world discussed the future of USSD. They shared their stories about services implemented using USSD.

• USSD is used “for prepaid top up because many people prefer punching in while seeing on the screen rather than going through an IVR.” (Jean Cerien, CEO at COMM4U; Paulo Correia, Telecommunications Consultant; Niranjan Srinivasan, Ericsson – Design & Planning – IN & VAS)

• “USSD is very popular for a number of core and killer services like: Read more