What are PWD spend patterns in Canadian telecommunications?
In subscription-based industries such as telecommunications, revenue per individual customer is dependent upon the size of the bundle for which they subscribe, and the ability to retain this customer over time (ie: customer lifetime value – CLV). Truly “new” telecommunication customers are rare, as such, reducing churn relative to competitors is essential to grow home and mobile market share. Within these constraints, a slightly lower bundle “spend” can lead to greater CLV, providing the lower spend correlates to sufficiently lower churn rates.
While telecommunications providers diligently track churn and CLV overall, this is not segmented by disability. As disability is frequently treated as health data, it can be problematic to share internally for analytic purposes – if customers disclose at all. This makes PWD customers a CLV “black box”.
This “black box” presents a significant challenge. Beyond PWD representing over 25% of the market for telecommunications services, Canadian regulators have pushed telecommunications companies to offer accessible plans to PWD meeting certain eligibility requirements, creating, in-effect, mandated accessibility discounts. For Canadian telecommunications providers the key question becomes the extent to which these impact CLV, and the downstream implications for widely advertising such programs.
Understand bundling and satisfaction patterns of PWD
dentify primary drivers of churn risk among customers with disabilities
Determine how accessibility discounts influence churn risk
Estimate impact of accessibility discounts on CLV
To address these problems, RoDG designed and administered a survey study to customers with disabilities across home internet providers to better understand their experiences, bundling and spend patterns, and churn risk. By segmenting by those with and without accessibility discounts, RoDG was able to identify churn implications and CLV opportunities of these programs.
Survey of PWD measuring customer satisfaction, churn behaviour, and accessibility discount usage
Analysis of churn risk drivers across disability populations
Assessment of how accessibility discounts influence decisions to switch
Benchmarking client performance against competitors on customer satisfaction
Accessibility discounts materially reduced churn risk among customers with disabilities, while also contributing to more positive Net Promoter Scores (NPS). This had downstream implications for increasing CLV while maintaining compliance with an evolving Canadian regulatory landscape in accessibility.
Churn among accessibility discount holders was significantly lower than among those without discounts.
Accessibility programs demonstrate potential to strengthen loyalty among PWD, positioning providers more competitively in the market.
There are opportunities to leverage “stable” discounts, such as those tied to disability, to maximize customer lifetime value.
