The Virtual Home Environment: Making Roamers Feel At Home
What is a Virtual Home Environment?
Now, more than ever before, it makes sense to do all that you can to maximise roaming revenue. One way is to implement a “virtual home environment” or “VHE”. This is a collection of applications that make phone use whilst roaming as simple as possible. It can be implemented for either inbound roamers, outbound roamers or both.
The principle function of a VHE is the automatic correction of miss-dialled numbers. This might include, for example, someone dialling directly from their phone book and not realising that they need to dial an international access code and drop the first digit before the number. Or it might mean someone dialling a short code to access, for example, their voice mail. Subsidiary functions include messaging to keep the customer informed about issues such as roaming costs or how to get help whilst roaming, and optimal routing to reduce unnecessary costs for callers accessing voice mail.
What is the Business Case?
The case for implementing VHE features is quite compelling. Studies show that operators without such features in place see that some 40% of “tourist” roamers never make a call and that 6% of attempted calls are never completed. Once a VHE system has been implemented, revenue has been seen to rise by as much as 30%
One of the most effective elements in the VHE system, as far as boosting revenue is concerned, is the correction of miss-dialled calls to voice mail. Research shows that typically more than 10% of calls made back to the home country are made to the voice mail short code. If these calls are not successful, it causes a great deal of frustration to the customer. Worse than that, it means that, because the subscriber cannot pick up his messages, he does not return the calls either. This means lost calls for the operator, usually lost high revenue international calls.
The next most effective element is the correction of dialled numbers from the subscriber’s phone book. Statistics show that typically more than 20% of calls back to the home country are initially dialled in national format.
Becoming a More Valuable Roaming Partner
In addition to the generation of more revenue for the operator, the addition of a VHE system, either for outbound or for inbound roamers, makes you a more valuable roaming partner. This is because the system boosts the usage of your inbound and outbound roamers and therefore generates more income for your roaming partners as well.
So in turn this should help to persuade your roaming partners to steer more of their subscribers to you. It may also help to persuade them to give you preferential pricing.
How Do VHE Solutions Differ
When selecting a VHE solution, there are a number of things to consider. Probably the two most important issues are the scope of the solution and how the numbering translation is managed.
VHE can operate for inbound and outbound roamers. In the case of outbound subscribers, CAMEL connectivity is normally required to each of your roaming partners where the service is to be offered (except in the case of Evolved Intelligence's managed service). Not all VHE systems work for pre-paid roamers, so, if you have a large number of those, either inbound or outbound, you may want to check whether these are effectively covered.
The numbering translation plan for a VHE system can be extremely large and complicated. To cover every possible combination of operators, the decision tree is huge. It is also continually changing as new networks are added or adjustments are made in existing ones. VHE vendors have different ways of dealing with this issue. Some simply limit their corrections to numbers starting with a certain pattern (for example a "00" indicating an international call), others are more sophisticated in their approach. You also need to consider how the system would be maintained in the longer term.
Related Applications
There are a number of VHE related applications. These include Welcome SMS Messaging and Optimal Routing.
Welcome SMS Messaging
A welcome SMS messaging system allows you to send messages to your subscribers when they arrive in a foreign network. These systems vary in sophistication. The better solutions take account of individual subscribers travel patterns. This means, for example, that if someone is crossing the same border every day, you do not necessarily send him the same message (or indeed any message) every time that he crosses. Perhaps the first time you send him a message to remind him that he is roaming and to advise him of the costs. The next time you might send a message telling him that it costs only “X” to make a 3 minute phone call home and so on. They may also allow you to send messages in multiple languages depending upon the subscriber profile.
You can also send welcome messages to inbound roamers. However the GSMA believes that this should only be done with the agreement of the partner network. If the messages are likely to help boost revenue however, there is no reason for them to withhold that permission.
Welcome messages can certainly help to boost revenue. Research has shown that, even though roaming tariffs have declined dramatically in recent years, many subscribers still believe them to be very expensive. As mentioned earlier, some 40% of holidaymakers never make a call, so there is much extra revenue to be won.
Optimal Routing (Trombone Elimination)
A “trombone” occurs when one of your roaming subscribers is called by someone in the home network but doesn’t answer. At this point the call is normally forwarded, typically to voice mail. This involves two unnecessary international legs and unnecessary cost.
Passing this cost onto the subscriber is often not a popular thing to do. In fact it is not allowed in many territories. The EU, for example outlawed this practice in 2009.
Retaining the Original Dialled Number (OCN)
Often when calls are made to roamers and routed to the voicemail box, the original dialled number is stripped out. This leads to the caller being invited to re-enter the number that he has dialled. This may not be easy for the caller (especially if he has dialled the number from his phone book). It can also be confusing. As a result many leave no message and therefore the roamer makes no return phone calls.
Good trombone elimination services should remember this OCN and re-insert it if it is stripped out. That way the caller gets a smooth experience.
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