Complimentary OTT Offerings Key To Customer Acquisition, Retention

Telcos have realised that bundling the right OTT services is something that will give them an edge over competition

Telcos are offering bundled OTT services to ensure customer loyalty.

(Photo: iStock)

Telecom is a highly competitive industry and customer acquisition and retention remains a major challenge. At any point, if a customer is dissatisfied with the service they’re receiving, it doesn’t take a lot for them to switch to another operator. As a result, beyond just providing great service, telcos are constantly coming up with innovative ways to ensure customer loyalty. One such way is by offering complimentary OTT services.

For telcos, acquiring and retaining customers is a challenge.(Photo: iStock)

Win-Win Situation

Telcos are tying up with OTT platforms in a bid to attract consumers as well as retain them. Given the rising popularity of OTT platforms, this partnership is proving to be a win-win situation for both parties. While it’s adding to the revenues of OTT players and helping them expand their subscriber base, it’s helping telcos acquire and retain customers.

Going by the results of a survey that came out earlier this year, consumers are loving telecom plans that offer complimentary OTT services. It was conducted by software major Amdocs and consultancy firm Ovum.

About 47 percent of the Indians surveyed said that having bundled OTT services made them less inclined to switch their service provider. Furthermore, 30 percent said that they would switch to another operator if their existing one didn’t offer such services.

These figures only go on to show that bundled OTT services are a big draw among consumers and also influence their decision of switching service providers.

Consumers are loving telecom plans that come with complimentary OTT services.(Photo: iStock)

What Consumers Get

Telcos too have realised that bundling the right OTT services is something that will give them a sure-shot edge over competition. To this end, they’re going all out to woo consumers. Here’s what consumers get.

• If you’re a prepaid or postpaid Reliance Jio subscriber, you get access to a whole range of content available on Jio TV and Jio Cinema. With Jio TV, you get to enjoy English and Hindi shows, live sports, music and more. Jio Cinema has an exhaustive line-up of movies and TV shows.
  
• Airtel offers its postpaid users premium ZEE5 content, Prime Video subscription and Wynk Music, among others, depending on the plan they have chosen as part of their Airtel Thanks benefit. Airtel Thanks is the telco’s customer loyalty program. As part of a promotional offer that came into effect on May 4, all Airtel Thanks customers now have access to ZEE5’s premium content library for free until July 12. Airtel and ZEE5 have been coming up with various offers for customers ever since they entered into a partnership in 2018. Recently, the telco also launched a new prepaid plan that offers an annual subscription to Disney + Hotstar VIP.
  
• Vodafone offers its customers the Vodafone Play app. This app has a collection of shows across ZEE5, Lionsgate, Hoichoi, ALTBalaji, SonyLIV and more. In addition, there are more than 450 Live TV channels and 15,000 movies to choose from. It only gets better. Subscribers of Vodafone RED, that starts at Rs 399, have access to Amazon Prime Video and Netflix as well, basis their choice of plan. Now isn’t that awesome?

The Way Ahead

As telcos tie up with different OTT players to offer complimentary services, consumers are more than happy to stay loyal. Clearly, this trend is here to stay and it will be exciting to see where things go from here!