The client, a Nordic market leader in its industry, delivers B2C services on a subscription basis. They compete in a mature and fragmented market with a few national and multiple local/regional competitors. The client has had years of positive market share growth and now has a target to grow ARPU by improving the commercial model and packaging of ancillary services, identifying levers to increase conversion rate and by defining churn preventive measures.
Customer opportunity/challenge
- High market share within core customer segments, challenge to grow existing and new customer segments
- Limited sales of ancillary services, both to existing and new customers
- High customer churn during initial months after subscription sign-up
- Great opportunity to provide a more tailored and flexible subscription model to meet customers’ needs
Our role
Axholmen was responsible for identifying and detailing key commercial changes, required operational adjustments, and a high-level business case related to
- Increasing ARPU per customer
- Decreasing churn during customer’s initial months
- Retaining or improving the conversion rate
The Approach
We used a combination of a highly data-driven approach, based on customer data, together with customer interviews and an external customer survey (Conjoint) to understand customers’ buying patterns and root causes for specific customer segments’ stagnating profits. Based on the quantitative and qualitative insights, we tested our commercial hypothesis on how to structure future subscription offerings in an external market study to verify the viability of the recommended solution.
Commercial levers used
The solution
- A modular and customized subscription model to accommodate customer-specific needs and to incentivize the purchase of additional services.
- A new pricing model to shift customer focus from bought hours to service value, including pricing of the new subscription packages and ancillary services that can be purchased on top.
- A transition from a decentralized to a harmonized and customer-centric sales process, including recommendation to develop a new sales channel to enable up-selling and capture full potential.
- A recommendation of focused customer retention and acquisition campaigns with a short payback period to increase lead conversion, reward loyalty, and incentivize up-sell of services and frequency to existing customers, to drive sales and conversion.
- A discounting strategy to incentivize add-on services increase purchase frequency, and hence increase ARPU.
- A high-level implementation plan of how to operationalize commercial- and organizational changes to realize and obtain the desired effect.
Results
Recommended commercial changes of how the client should design its new commercial offering combined with defined and detailed commercial initiatives have a revenue uplift potential of 10% generated from increased ARPU, improved conversion rates and increased net retention. The actual figures are pending ongoing implementation.
