For the longest time, international calling was rightly perceived as an outrageously expensive and opaque service. Still, that never deterred generations of immigrants from connecting with their families abroad, irrespective of the costs and the hurdles involved.
Thanks to the emergence of smartphones and calling apps, international calls are now relatively cheaper, convenient, and accessible. And since the early 2000s, the global migrant stock has grown by nearly 130 million persons.
Apart from having more incentives to make international calls more freely, diaspora communities are also growing more rapidly.
Why should telecom firms pay more attention to this customer segment?
The Call Is Never Just a Call
For most migrants, keeping in touch with families and communities is a matter of how often, and not a question of whether it’s something worth doing.
In many cases, it is an absolute necessity.
In a survey covering respondents in Europe, North America, and Australia, researchers found that, on average, about 21% of migrant youth connect with their families abroad every day. Another 28% connect at least once a week. Less than 15% of the respondents reported never reaching out to their family, friends, and communities overseas.
Overall, there is no doubt that maintaining close contact with loved ones abroad is a defining feature of a migrant life. The connection helps them stay grounded and serves as an avenue to stay updated with the well-being of others and exchange support when needed.
Basically, keeping in touch is an emotional commitment that both parties on the call are willing to sustain over a lifetime.
As a result, the flow of communication stays consistent and even increases in times of crisis. For telecom companies, this means a reliable, international calling customer base with potentially higher customer lifetime value than any other segment.
What Consistency Looks Like in Practice
With regard to international calling, the loyalty of diaspora communities precedes the market itself.
Before telephones, handwritten letters helped bridge the gap. It didn’t matter that correspondence could take weeks or even months; people were prepared to do everything right to stay in touch with their loved ones abroad.
This commitment to staying connected persisted through telegrams, telephones, and now smartphones, even when:
- Per-minute rates to most-called destinations were exorbitantly high.
- Call quality to mobile numbers in hard-to-reach destinations was abysmal.
- When international calls were laden with hidden charges.
Irrespective of the varying situations that prevailed as the international calling market evolved, the commitment and consistency of diaspora communities in using the available services remained a common factor across eras.
How Diaspora Communities Actually Choose a Calling Platform
Given that diaspora communities leverage international calling to foster cultural and social connections, it is unsurprising that community is an active determinant in how an immigrant chooses a calling platform.
A diaspora user is more likely to go for an international calling platform recommended by their peers, trusting that the recommendation is coming from a place of high-quality experience.
Further assessments often happen across two domains:
- Top-up as a trust signal: International calling customers generally prefer platforms that also offer the ability to send airtime or data directly to Flow mobile numbers, Airtel, Digicel, Vodacom, or any network carrier worldwide. To many users, this additional service is an indicator that a platform has strong partnerships with local networks, and therefore is better suited to deliver high-quality calls.
- Destination specificity: Users want to know if a platform can reliably terminate calls to destinations they call frequently. Basically, offering a competitive rate is not enough, especially if call quality to the given destination is considerably poor.
Once diaspora users find a suitable platform, they tend to stay and use the platform’s services to create a communication routine that they are often unwilling to break so quickly or easily.
The Top-Up Economy — A Window into How Diaspora Communication Really Works
In the diaspora international calling community, top-ups are not an afterthought, and telecom providers targeting this market segment shouldn’t treat them as one either.
Top-ups are among the primary trust signals that attract and retain diaspora users.
This user behavior is propped by the fact that in many call destinations, prepaid mobile is the most dominant service available to recipients. Consequently, being out of data or airtime hinders the ability to initiate calls when necessary.
Just as much as diaspora users want to be able to make calls to their family and friends back home, they also want to make sure that their families are not stranded whenever they want to connect with them.
Telecom services that provide destination-specific top-up coverage stand to gain more trust and loyalty from users who are intent on always keeping the line of communication open.
What Telecom Gets Wrong When It Looks at This Segment
The common assumption is that once a platform offers international calling at a competitive rate, diaspora users would troop in.
In reality, the quality of the calling experience is the single most important incentive for most users. This is why diaspora users rely on word-of-mouth recommendations.
Pricing might attract users, but it is the call quality that makes them stay.
For users, the logic is quite simple: an unstable or unclear connection greatly diminishes the calling experience with emotional costs that quickly outweigh the supposed competitive rate.
Therefore, a telecom platform that prioritizes competitive pricing over high-quality connectivity is likely to record low user retention in the given corridor.
The Infrastructure of Belonging
The pre-smartphone eras with outrageously expensive and low-quality international calling services are now history.
However, the need and demand for international calling has not waned. In fact, it is moving in tandem with the growing global migrant stock.
There are more people all around the world looking for better means to reach out to and stay connected with their parents, siblings, children, relatives, and friends back home daily or weekly.
As long as a telecom platform guarantees seamless connectivity in the desired corridor, diaspora users will stick with it, even if it comes at a slightly higher rate.
Inside Telecom provides you with an extensive list of content covering all aspects of the Tech industry. Keep an eye on our Press Releases section to stay informed and updated with our daily articles.
