Big fish need special pampering<\/p>\n
Jonminofri Nazir, Contributor, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta<\/p>\n
Would you like to be treated like a king by Telkomsel and be
\ngiven a wide range of facilities for free? You could even have
\nyour number not appear on the receiver's cellular screen.<\/p>\n
A customer service staff member will also be made available to
\ncater to all your requirements and handle any complaints about
\nyour phone. The staff member is easy to contact through your
\ncellular, because he or she is made specially available to
\nservice special customers. In addition, if your payment is late,
\nyou will not be treated as harshly as ordinary customers, whose
\nphones are normally cut off.<\/p>\n
All these facilities are automatically yours to enjoy the
\nmoment you reach special status. But if you are an ordinary
\nsubscriber, you can also get similar facilities just by
\nfrequently using your post-paid kartuHalo card issued by
\nTelkomsel. And when your bills reach Rp 1 million per month,
\nwithin three months you will be included in the VIP category by
\nthe operator.<\/p>\n
\"That's one of our ways of retaining subscribers,\" said
\nWoeryanto Soeradji, the commercial director of Telkomsel.<\/p>\n
Users of prepaid cards, for whatever amount they spend, do not
\nreceive extra facilities. The reason is simple: the GSM operator
\ndoes not have the personal data of prepaid card users.<\/p>\n
Woeryanto said that in fact all operators give special
\ntreatment to their major customers, however, the facilities
\nprovided differ from operator to operator.<\/p>\n
For example, Excelcom's major customers receive a special
\nmagazine and special facilities at Soekarno-Hatta Airport.<\/p>\n
Other companies have different ways of treating these \"big-
\nfish\" customers.<\/p>\n
Blue Bird, a 30-year-old taxi company, takes care of its loyal
\ncustomers in its own unique way.<\/p>\n
\"We pamper our customers at unexpected times. We call it
\n'Surprise the customer',\" said Noni S. A. Poernomo, the business
\ndevelopment director of the company. It means that the management
\ngives customers something they cannot predict in advance, making
\nit more emotional than receiving extra benefits that are clearly
\nstated.<\/p>\n
Out of the few major customers, Blue Bird prioritizes about 10
\nwho can get almost anything they request. For instance, Jakarta
\nInternational School (JIS) always insists on clean buses, pitch
\nblack tires, specially designed seats and thick windows. They
\nalso insist that the windows do not break into sharp shards,
\ntherefore every three months the windows of the buses are tested
\nat JIS by throwing stones at them. The drivers are also required
\nto be not only skillful in driving, but capable of managing an
\naccident and providing first aid.<\/p>\n
In short, Blue Bird meets every demand.<\/p>\n
In the eyes of Blue Bird management all these requests are
\nreasonable, because the contracts are for a four-year period,
\nwhich is technically equal to the depreciation value of the
\nbuses. Hence, Blue Bird provides fully dedicated buses for this
\ntype of customer and there are no less than 400 buses contracted
\nout on this basis.<\/p>\n
Not included with the big fish are other loyal customers, who
\nalso enjoy other privileges, such as paying on credit. The
\nprecondition for this special treatment is that the customer has
\nused Blue Bird metered taxis with fares totaling at least Rp 1
\nmillion a month. He or she is then given a pad of 25 credit
\nvouchers, which looks like a checkbook. The customer only has to
\nfill in the amount of the fare on a slip and then hands it over
\nto the driver every time he or she uses a Blue Bird taxi. The
\npassenger is then billed at the end of the month.<\/p>\n
Once a customer uses up three pads of credit vouchers, he is
\nentitled to a free voucher to stay at a hotel on Lombok. And
\nafter continually using vouchers for six months, the management
\nstill has more surprise gifts to offer. It seems that Blue Bird
\nmanagement believes in the element of surprise when pleasing its
\npriority customers.<\/p>\n
In this way Blue Bird has netted some 400 voucher users, most
\nof them corporations. A bank, for example, gives vouchers to its
\nemployees working overtime. Other users are foreign companies,
\nmostly oil companies.<\/p>\n
These vouchers have contributed 10 percent to Blue Bird's
\nrevenue.<\/p>\n
For many businesses, priority customers are small in number,
\nbut big in contribution. If these big-fish customers were to jump
\ninto another pond, it would naturally result in negative
\nrepercussions on the company's finances.<\/p>\n
Telkomsel's VIP subscribers, for instance, are only 5 percent
\nof the 800,000 holders of kartuHalo, but their contribution can
\namount to as much as 22 percent to that of the total postpaid
\nsubscribers.<\/p>\n
In the banking industry the number is more fantastic. At one
\nof the largest private banks in Indonesia, 20 percent of the
\ncustomers have deposited 80 percent of the bank's total funds,
\nhence the other 80 percent of its customers own only 20 percent
\nof the money in the bank. This means that even if half of the
\nbank's customers withdrew their funds, theoretically at least,
\nthe bank's performance would not be badly influenced, as long as
\nthe big-fish customers stay on.<\/p>\n
However, each type of business has a different level of
\ndifficulty in deciding their priority customers and how to
\nmaintain them.<\/p>\n
The first problem is the database.<\/p>\n
For Telkomsel this does not pose as a major problem, as the
\ndatabase of its postpaid customers are automatically kept in
\ncomputers. But the data is very general, as it is selected based
\non the amount of usage. Thus, it is difficult for Telkomsel to
\nformulate the right approach for its priority customers. The data
\ndoes not classify customers by profession, sex, age, hobby and so
\nforth. If they were able to categorize data by a more specific
\ncriteria, it would be easier to maintain customers so that they
\nwould not replace their cards with ones from the competitor.<\/p>\n
The bank's data operates in the same way. The wealthy
\ncustomers it maintains are so varied, with different lifestyles
\nand different characters. As banks do not have any specific
\nlifestyle data, it becomes difficult to group the customers under
\none classification and provide privileged facilities that would
\nsuit everyone's taste.<\/p>\n
One can imagine the hugely different lifestyles between two
\nbillionaires. One customer, with Rp 3 billion in the bank, might
\nbe a Glodok trader, who wears shorts and drives an old Kijang,
\nwhile another with the same amount could be the wife of a high-
\nranking official, who is fond of shopping and has a luxury car.<\/p>\n
The approach to the two opposing types of customers must
\nclearly be different. Here lies the difficulty for the bank in
\npampering their big-fish customers.<\/p>\n
Blue Bird could be one of the companies with the most
\ncustomers in their database. They have currently on their
\ncomputers 800,000 phone numbers along with the names of customers
\nwho have called them for their services. This number represents
\napproximately 10 percent of the total phone numbers published by
\nPT Telkom.<\/p>\n
Based on this data, Blue Bird selects its priority customers
\nand offers them its special programs and facilities.<\/p>\n
Outside the 800,000 regulars, there might be millions of other
\nunregistered customers who stop Blue Bird taxis on the streets.<\/p>\n
Because of this deterring factor, many companies provide
\ngeneral facilities for their major customers. Nothing personal.
\nThe most they can give is a price discount and a card from
\nTelkomsel to wish you a happy birthday.<\/p>",
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