Real Time Provisioning of Mobile Service Features

Having worked in the wireless industry for some time, it’s always amazed me by how painful and expensive a process it is to change plans and features for your mobile phone service. There is a lot of missed revenue on the table and some that just doesn’t see a profit because of the way it was turned on. Here’s an example, you have a new customer activation that does not include SMS (text messaging). This customer later has a friend trying to text them, but can’t get through. They then decide they want this service. Now, this service may bring in anywhere from $36/year to $1200 a year, but more likely it’s going to be on the lower end until the customer gets into it. So, why use an expensive call center transaction or even more expensive an in-store transaction when the phones themselves have the capability to perform these transactions. Why doesn’t the customer just receive that text message, but for them to read it, require them to sign up for a SMS plan. They could do this all from responding to text messages on their mobile phone, or accessing a secure web site. Want to upgrade your minute plan? Simple, just send a text to “upgrade” and follow the prompts.

Posted by Darin Archer on December 18, 2005 | Comments (0)

Have Fun Now – Instant Discounts on Last Minute Activities

How often do you get the whim to just go see a play or concert. Have you ever found yourself needing to plan an afternoon adventure for you and your friends or a lover? It seems to me, this should be a simple effort, but after doing some research, I didn’t quite find what I was looking for. There are plenty of ways to get discount coupons for everything from a dinner out to the hottest adventure theme park, but wouldn’t it be nice to browse all available activities in one place? My idea is to create a marketplace for individual businesses to post their services and provide instant day of discounts when their supply is shorter then their demand. For example, if you run a small speed boat rental company and you’ve got a weekend coming up that is low on bookings, you could post a special offer on this site to close out the gap. For the system to truly be awesome, it would have to be flexible for the businesses to load their excess capacity and cover enough different types of activities that it’s interesting to the consumer. The theatre industry has done well at this with their “half price” tickets at specific box offices. They sell a deeply discounted ticket on the day of the show when they didn’t sell enough seats. It’s obviously beneficial to the business as this is revenue otherwise lost.

To get really fancy you could add a recommendation engine to it based on previous activities purchased and/or recommendations from others with similar interests.

Posted by Darin Archer on December 18, 2005 | Comments (0)