VAS Marketing: Improving the User Interface to drive revenue

Voice Mail and SMS have been in a mature stage for several years now; growth in most markets has slowed down and until recently, they kept the same form and functionality they had since they were first introduced years ago.
Both services, however, remain the bread and butter of VAS services. In most markets (the USA being a notable exception) Voice Mail is the largest VAS contributor to revenue for mobile operators; SMS in some cases accounts for up to 90% of data revenue.
This alone justifies paying attention to recent developments that are breathing new life into these two services by dramatically improving the user experience with visual interfaces.
The best example of this is the iPhone, which introduced to the market visual applications for both services. Visual Voice Mail had been around for several years, but it was not until the iPhone was introduced that it got the attention of mobile operators.
While it can be argued that the iPhone reflects a shift in users’ expectations as opposed to being the catalyst of a major change in the industry, its launch in June 2007 has shown that traditional services such as voicemail and text messaging can greatly benefit from the use of visual interfaces that drastically improve the user experience and boost usage[1].

According to M:Metrics, the iPhone is already the most popular device for accessing news and information on the mobile Web (see here). Comverse, a leading voice mail vendor states that its own internal research show that visual voice mail users are much more likely than regular users to retrieve voice mail messages (see article/press release here). This in turn motivates the caling party to deposit messages, which is where the money is (in most countries, most revenue from voice mail comes from completed calls).

The visual interface for SMS in the iPhone is nothing more than a visual add on that sits on the device; unlike visual voice mail, it does not add client - server functionality. However, the improved user experience is more likely to increase usage and will pave the way for more sophisticated services such as the GSMA Personal Messaging initiative (SMS 2.0).

Every day we hear about new and exciting services, but SMS and Voice Mail still have the potential to remain a cash cow for a few more years; operators can greatly benefit from a strategy to improve user satisfaction and increase usage from both services.

[1] “iPhone drives 'unheard of' data traffic - O2”, http://macworld.co.uk/ipod-itunes/news/index.cfm?newsid=20402