Case study: G$4$UltimateMobile

G$4$UltimateMobile is one of UK$$s leading digital communications company, with superfast $4$G mobile and fibre broadband services. It has coverage of around $65\%$ of the UK including major cities such as London, Manchester, Bristol, Nottingham, Edinburgh and Glasgow. Currently, the company has $100$ stores across the UK and approximately $4$ million customers, and are looking to maintain profitable double$-$digit growth over the next $5$ years.

G$4$UltimateMobile has a customer relationship management system $($CRM$)$ in place, which is however unable to cope with the increasing numbers of subscribers. G$4$UltimateMobile use call centres to field customer calls, process orders and queries. Historically, call centre capacity requirements have been closely tied to the size of the subscriber base. With G$4$UltimateMobile enjoying double$-$digit growth, costs would soon spiral if the number of sales staff grew at its current rate to cope with increased customer demand. Furthermore, currently, there is no real$-$time assistance on their online portal. Therefore, to effectively support the business, the CIO $($Chief Information Officer$)$ of G$4$UltimateMobile, Mark Brown, has authorised the implementation of a new CRM system. It$$s currently in development and due to be delivered in $8$ months.

The upgrade to the new CRM system is seen as critical for growing client base and the CIO firmly backs the new system, and believes that it will provide an ideal opportunity for G$4$UltimateMobile to $$push$$ sales by profiling customers and offering special deals. This move aims to cut costs significantly and a better ability to cope with rapid growth, breaking the tight link between subscriber numbers and Sales staff, increasing revenues through customer profiling, and improving customer satisfaction. Furthermore, the improved customer information that will be gathered in the new system will allow greater analysis to be performed within all departments, and is seen as a key differentiating factor of G$4$UltimateMobile.

Mark Brown, the CIO of the company has many times highlighted the company$$s vision which is to $$provide the best network and best service so our customers trust us with their digital lives$.$ He feels that the way to achieve this vision is by providing the:

Best network: building a new digital backbone for the UK

Best service: delivering outstanding service to our customers through our stores, in our call

centres, online and through our mob apps.

Customer trust and relevance: providing a personalised experience for our customers: from the products and services we offer to the way we sell them.

Dr Avgousta Kyriakidou Zacharoudiou

$2$

In order to remain competitive and provide a richer and faster customer experience, G$4$UltimateMobile plans to develop two mobile applications for the recent operating systems such as $($Android $13,$ IOS $17).$ The first one is going to be an upgrade to the existing G$4$UltimateMobile app and would allow customers, among others to view and amend their account $($e$.$g$.$ upgrade or customise packages$),$ access real$-$time assistance and also pay their bills in real$-$time. Executives hope that this will help ease customer sales staff and allow them to focus on additional customer queries.

The department wishes to develop a live Augmented reality $($AR$)$ News mobile app. AR adds digital elements to a live view often by using the camera on a smartphone. Users will have the chance to scan articles from newpapers or any other types of content $($e$.$g$.$ video, photo gallery, latest news updates, related social media information, educational animations etc.$)$ and the software will be able to identify the photo and then load related digital content. The content will be displayed in the mobile device's camera view. It would be positioned over the scanned photo so that digital content would appear to have replaced the photo. Reading will become a new experience for users. Whilst the second mob app initiative sounds appealing, this has caused concerns to some within the organisation. For instance, some members of the senior management team do not believe that this is a strategic capability at the moment for them and are concerned about entering this market. Further discussions will take place with regards to the development of this second app.

George Harris, the Marketing Director, however, believes that this will hugely boost their subscriber base and help them build new, meaningful customer relationships. He believes that the key to increased market share is recognising the need to $$go out and find customers and not wait for them to come to us$.$ Therefore this second proposed mobile application is seen as a way to target the younger audience and more business$-$oriented people, who are always more inclined and more used to using their mobile phones and$/$or tablets for reading on the go$.$

Your company has an established relationship with G$4$UltimateMobile and we$$ve helped them design and execute their growth strategy. You have also