Wireless service providers looking to reduce customer churn have relied on potential revenue-losing means to keep customers loyal, including offering discounted service plans with contracts or giving away new phones when customers sign on for a certain time.
Fremont, Calif.-based Ettache.com said its account aggregation service is designed to combat the money-losing trend by helping service providers keep their customers, and by getting those subscribers to spend more money on their service.
Delivering account aggregation, Ettache gives customers a single point of access to all their personal financial information and accounts through wireless providers’ Internet access services. The service includes access to bank statements, credit-card balances, bills, e-mail, travel rewards programs and a variety of other personal account information.
Customers not only end up spending more money using revenue-generating data services, they are offered a useful tool to help them navigate the wireless Web.
“Account aggregation is the first step in a series of solutions geared toward efficient account management and personalization that companies will offer to their online customers,” said Rajiv Saxena, president and chief executive officer of Ettache. “Given the inevitability of consumer demand for convenient access to these best-of-breed applications, companies must partner with a solution provider that offers a component-based framework enabling a partner-based approach to serving all customer needs.”
Customers who use the Ettache service begin by entering the user names and passwords to any online account they want easy access to wirelessly. Ettache, backed by security measures that include biometric scanning of its employees that have access to the information, keeps the passwords on record and issues the customer an Ettache user name and password.
From any wireless Internet device, the user only has to reach Ettache’s Web site and enter the given user name and password to have access to all preprogrammed information, cutting down on the time needed to access a variety of Web sites and providing one-click access to financial records.
Even if a financial institution does not have a wirelessly enabled Web site, Ettache pulls the information from that institution’s wired site and presents the information wirelessly.
For customers who include their telephone service billing information, Ettache offers an Advisor service that breaks down the telephone company’s rate plan into domestic and international charges and provides comparative prices of the same talk time on up to 36 competing calling plans from various carriers.
Dr. Manoj Sharma, chief operating officer and vice president of marketing for Ettache, noted that the company plans to expand its Advisor service to show comparative charges for portfolio analysis, debt management and tax planning tools in the future.
For service providers who implement the service, Ettache offers a native suite of business analysis components allowing an analyst to extract information from customer profiles and transform it into usable business insight.
“We’re helping our clients attract and retain customers by delivering a highly scalable robust and open account aggregation solution,” said Dr. Sharma. “By deploying the Ettache solution, our clients can be assured that their customers will always have access to the most advanced and innovative tools to access and manage all their personal financial needs.”
