Black Friday and Cyber Monday: how CSPs can benefit from the big (smartphone) shopping days

Holiday shopping is shifting more and more towards smartphones. Today’s consumers – true digital natives – are already used to shopping on their phones, which means a lot of orders on Black Friday and Cyber Monday come from mobile devices. According to Salesforce, on Black Friday in 2018, 67% of digital traffic and 49% of all online orders came from mobiles. What’s more, 2018 saw $2.1 billion of sales made by smartphone.

As consumers flock online to grab the best shopping deals on Black Friday, the day brings new business opportunities not only for retailers, but also for communications service providers (CSPs).

Nexign’s Integration Projects Manager Sergey Sosin suggests that, to reap the benefits of the day, CSPs should consider the following key capabilities:

Integration with financial partners

The financial services provided by partners (banks) can be integrated with CSPs’ services. Partnerships between telecom operators and banks allow a bank card balance to be linked to the balance on a subscriber’s account. With this kind of integration in place, more consumers will shop using this account during the sales, and more CSPs will benefit.

Partner offerings on CSPs’ marketplaces

By now, customers have got used to the traditional Black Friday best deals and look forward to them every year. Keeping this in mind, telecom operators can also promote their partners’ digital non-telco products, services and bundles on the marketplaces for subscribers and launch different promos for these offerings around Black Friday – all in close cooperation with their partners.

Credit services for subscribers

With access to information about their subscribers, operators can offer credit services from their financial partners in real time to some selected customers, based on the scores CSPs have given them. Around the Black Friday sales, this kind of lending also helps to increase an operator’s revenue and customer loyalty.

So to take advantage of the most popular shopping days, CSPs should consider implementing a robust BSS solution that offers effective integration with financial services and supports the creation of a partner ecosystem in new monetisation channels. These functionalities enable telecom operators to increase ARPU, improve the user experience and significantly boost customer loyalty.

Last but not least, sales days such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday illustrate the importance of reliable IT systems. Telecom operators should make sure their BSS is highly reliable and able to keep up with the increase in traffic resulting from the mass use of smartphones for shopping.

Find out now how Nexign Network Monetisation Suite enables CSPs to open up new and non-telecom revenue streams, and to effectively mix financial and telco technologies to increase ARPU and customer loyalty.