Point to Ponder

With the ever increasing price-wars between operators in Pakistan, mobile companies come up with new services for its end users. Usually a new service by one becomes a rat race for another. The profit or revenue margins remain positive until the followers or late entrants manage to come up with something similar and that too with a more attractive name.

Services like TeleDoctor (Telenor), CallSecure (Mobilink), CallBlock(Ufone), have set a precedent in local market.

But the key to success remains innovation. How close can you get to the customer needs and expectations? No matter how many CSIs (Customer Satisfaction Indicies) you carry out, there is always a segment in customer base that remain below the satisfaction level.

Lack of R&D centers and test beds within operators restrict potential of new services. Engineers within these telcos are mostly assisting managed services teams of vendors rather than taking up the work themselves.

It will take some serious thinking by telco top management to look into this aspect and try to seek some alignment.