Make the smartphone lifecycle as smart as the devices

For 20+ years in the telecom industry, Eitan Linker has seen business change for mobile operators.

Today, the operators “fight for the price”, and he believes in a different approach; give customers a truly differentiated experience. “When the customer is satisfied, everything else falls into place,” he says.

MCE Systems, a technology provider where Linker is Chief Commercial Officer, helps operators differentiate their offerings by mobilizing a better customer experience. In addition to technology, MCE brings operational benchmarks for key customer journeys, customer insights aggregated across 25 countries, and over 15 years of implementation experience, accelerating execution and payback on technology investments.

MCE transforms moments of truth across the device lifecycle – from setup, to service and maintenance, to upgrade and trade-in. Examples range from transferring the customer’s data and settings to the new phone, and securely wiping the old phone, to diagnosing, servicing and maintaining the new device to extend its life cycle, to trading in, upgrading and finally reusing the phone for a second life. The solutions come as a stand-alone app, and websites, or are fully integrated into myOperator app/web applications and frontline systems.

The company digitizes, automates and connects device lifecycle journeys so they are fast, accurate and provide a comprehensive, actionable historical view of each device. This enables MCE’s solutions to connect customers and representatives to the “best-next-action” at all times – enabling repair options from care-to-trade, to personalized upgrade offers. It empowers reps to have more rewarding interactions with customers and helps customers spend less time managing devices because everything is connected – meaning consumers can start, break, and resume personalized journeys at any touchpoint, at any time.

Links point to trade-ins, often plagued by long transactions with a lot of friction and high uncertainty around pricing. “Trade-in today is a bad experience for customers,” says Linker. As a result, over $200 billion worth of mobile phones currently sit idle in drawers in Western Europe and North America – an opportunity for carriers who can sell the used devices at a profit, as well as customers who can use trade-in value to pay less for newer phone models or better price plans.

Vodafone UK recognized the opportunity and challenged MCE to deliver a digital-first, omnichannel trade-in offer, including a price guarantee – always difficult due to subjective variances in the typical grading process, which takes place in the warehouse. MCE’s highly accurate, AI-powered remote grading app technology made it not only possible, but quick and easy. With this innovation, Vodafone was able to quickly deliver a guaranteed price to each user of the company’s MyOperator app, without requiring store visits. It put users (and their representatives) in control of the transaction while ensuring that Vodafone achieved better margins. “When the customer engages in the diagnostics to grade their device; the valuation is completely transparent. There is much more confidence in the final price.”

As a result, Vodafone increased trade-in by 250% in the first year (and digital trade-in by over 80%), reduced churn from over 30% to 2%, improved NPS and reduced trade-in times, and became the UK’s top trade-in carrier. It also increased upselling to premium plans and increased the digital mix dramatically. Vodafone led the market leading to a reduced mix of Never Traders of 89% in 2020 to 47% in 2022.

“Working with MCE Systems and incorporating their platform has enabled us to deliver best-in-class products and services with a very high standard of security and user experience as part of our goal to bring cutting-edge digital technologies and solutions to market. Together, continue to turn the challenges of digital transformation and evolving customer expectations into competitive advantage,” said Varun Krishnan, Vodafone’s Managing Director of FinTech. “Today, the MCE Systems ecosystem is being used to improve the trade-in and upgrade journeys for millions of Vodafone customers. , across the UK, Germany, Romania and Greece, enabling them to get a guaranteed price for their old devices. We look forward to continue this collaboration with MCE to drive our digital-first, Device Lifecycle Services initiatives.”

It is not only transporters and customers who benefit. Because trade-ins enable circular economies, they help reduce the industry’s carbon footprint. For every 1 million phones that are reused, we avoid 48 tonnes of CO2 emissions.

While mobile devices are still in focus, the future is wide open. “We’ve already started diagnosing TVs and are looking at gaming and IoT devices,” says Linker.

Read Vodafone’s full digital report HERE.