In the era of stock management, operators still need to provide refined services

Recently, the three major operators announced the development of mobile and broadband user numbers in December 2020 and the whole year. From the statistical data, it can be seen that the mobile users and broadband users of the three major operators have entered the era of stock management, which requires operators to provide refined services, improve customer retention and satisfaction, and increase customer contribution value.

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According to statistics, in December 2020, the number of mobile users of China Mobile decreased by 1.792 million, the number of mobile users of China Unicom decreased by 1.283 million, and only the number of mobile users of China Telecom increased by 190,000. In terms of the number of mobile users throughout the year, China Mobile decreased by 8.359 million, China Unicom decreased by 12.664 million, and China Telecom increased by 15.45 million.

In terms of the number of broadband users, in December 2020, China Mobile added 1.108 million broadband users, China Telecom added 370,000 broadband users, and China Unicom's broadband users decreased by 338,000. In terms of the number of broadband users throughout the year, the three major operators all achieved growth, with China Mobile adding 23.28 million users, China Telecom adding 5.4 million users, and China Unicom adding 2.617 million users.

From the above data, we can see that the number of mobile users of the three major operators has gradually peaked and is showing a downward trend. The era of demographic dividend has become a thing of the past, and mobile users have entered the stage of stock management. According to the author's understanding, operators have been preparing for a rainy day as early as two years ago. Therefore, operators are already accustomed to equity operations and refined services. On the one hand, they want to improve customer retention and satisfaction, and on the other hand, they want to increase customer contribution value and develop content and applications.

For example, Zhejiang Mobile has carried out operations for existing users added to the WeChat private domain user pool. Zhejiang Mobile first imported a large number of existing users from mobile business halls, official WeChat accounts and physical channels into WeChat personal accounts to establish a personal account user pool to achieve user connection; secondly, it activated users through differentiated service methods that interacted with users emotionally, and communicated with users through one-to-one interactions, activities, and friend circles to deepen user relationships; finally, through in-depth interaction with users, it precipitated user data, obtained user personalized tags, and connected mobile system user tags to achieve user dataization, and then carried out point-to-point refined services and personalized precision marketing. Zhejiang Mobile has formed a one-stop WeChat service marketing system for users from attracting new users, promoting activation, retention, lead incubation, monetization, and fission propagation. On this basis, it continuously improves the service experience, improves business conversion, and realizes the traffic monetization of mobile business halls and official WeChat accounts.

As for the counter-cyclical growth in the number of mobile users achieved by China Telecom in 2020, the specific reasons still need to be analyzed from the internal data of the operator. However, the author believes that China Telecom and China Mobile have different development directions and resource investments, so there is a differentiated development in the number of users. China Telecom uses broadband convergence development to drive the growth of mobile phone users. Its broadband market has long entered the deep operation stage, and the operation of users needs to be oriented to value operation. China Mobile is still expanding its own broadband market, and the current strategy is still mainly based on low-price expansion, but when the number of users accumulates to a certain level, the focus of operations will inevitably shift from scale first to value acquisition.

In terms of the number of 5G package users, in December 2020, China Mobile's 5G package users increased by 17.621 million, China Telecom's 5G package users increased by 7.02 million, and China Unicom has not yet disclosed the number of 5G package users. In terms of the number of 5G users throughout the year, China Mobile and China Telecom alone have reached 250 million. In 2020, the number of 5G package users of the three major operators has continued to grow, and the 5G era brings more opportunities for the operators' own development. In the 3G era, operators mostly obtained contract customers through terminal subsidies; in the 4G era, operators actively cooperated with external companies to transfer terminal subsidies and launch various financial contract models to obtain contract customers; in the 5G era, operators are actively exploring the possibility of various new terminal contract models. Judging from the current development situation, the growth space brought by 5G to operators will first be reflected in the replacement market.