Matrix Telecom Inc.

Case History
When Matrix Telecoms decided to enter the dial-around market, they purchased C-talk’s customer list* - and asked us to do for them what we had done for Citizens Utilities. Although it had been nearly a year since our last communication with C-talk customers, more than 30% of them were still using the service. In an industry with a churn rate of 20 – 40% per month, this was viewed as an incredible achievement.

We ferreted out people who were like the former C-talk customers (data mining and predictive modeling were our ‘big guns’) and sent them the same message: flat rates combined with community contribution. Since AT&T and Sprint were now had a similar flat rate offering(the other two still had confusing rules that wrinkled their rates), we chose to “tell it like it was”.

The headline for the first mailing: "Who's the monkey here, anyway?" Based on customer response, not only was the message still pertinent, but the approach obviously touched the chord.

*C-talk had been highly profitable, but the shareholders decided to get out of long distance because the PIC product – where you choose one carrier to have as your full-time long distance provider – had been losing money from the outset. Note: It was managed by a different Citizens group, who used their own marketing team.