Background

The Internet has changed the way consumers manage their lives, from shopping to consuming content to managing their Finances - any successful consumer centric organisation must have a self-care option.

To Three as a mobile data centric telecommunications company it was self-evident that the primary method of self-care should be via a mobile app.

Our challenge was to build an app that ran on all major devices and operating systems that was fully integrated with their billing, CRM and marketing platforms.

We were the vendor of choice to build the app and this relationship is still key after 10 years, with an average team of 11 made up of developers and QA testers, regularly working on maintaining the app.

What we did

Native versions of the app for Android and iOS enables both “Pay As You Go” and “Pay Monthly” subscribers to manage their accounts.

The app works to relieve the load on call centres and give customers the flexibility to change what they need, when they need to. It also offers the following features:

• See your allowances and current usage at a glance
• Get a breakdown of your bills, including any extra charges, and check up to 12 months worth of previous bills
• Find support on how to move your number to Three, change your payment date and lots more
• View your Pay As You Go balance & plan your next top-up through the app
• Check when you're eligible for an upgrade
• Check and manage your roaming settings to use your phone abroad

What we’ve developed provides full integration with Three’s self-care and partner platforms. To develop and support a product used monthly by millions of people that is reliable, secure and highly available requires expertise and experience.

• Integration with backend systems for CRM and billing
• Network integration, performance monitoring and crash analytics
• Analytics for analysing subscriber behaviour
• Surveys to monitor customer feedback
• Live Chat to help
• In-App messaging that engages active app users with contextual messages
• Cloud messaging for sending targeted messages and notifications
• A/B testing to optimize app experience through experimentation
• User registration and profile management including GDPR consents
• Security and authentication
• Support for both Three and partner offers
• Tooling to monitor signal strength and coverage

Outcomes

Over six million users have installed the app and use it 15 million times a month. More than 80% of revenue from top-ups, add-ons, price plan changes and upgrades are generated via the app.

Three decided that it needed a subscriber rewards solution to assist in customer retention and acquisition. As the sole app development partner we were tasked with this challenge, which you can read all about in the WUNTU case study.