Pooling or stackable pricing - which one delights a customer?

There are various ways to price out capacity at a wholesale level but two of my favorite ways are pooling and stacking. When I designed the stackable plan for the Federal Government sector, I was conscious of the advantages and disadvantages a stackable plan offered over a pooling plan. But, before we get there, let me first explain with examples how these two plans work. Suppose a business customer wants a large amounts of data but does not know how much each smart phone or mobile broadband line would consume, then a pooled data plan might be a good idea. Here's how it works. Enterprise customers could buy a 100GB data plan for let's say $1000 per month. For this $1000 per month the customer also gets 50 lines included in the plan.  If the customer wants more than 50 lines, additional lines would cost $5 per line to add to the $1000 pool. remember you can add a line here, but you do not get any additional data capacity. You are capped at the total 100GB. The important thing, however, to notice here is if there is un-utilized capacity in the 100GB pool, by simply adding another line for $5, the new line can share in the pool. What is the effective cost in this scenario: let's assume the customer ends up adding another 50 lines as the customer estimates that the average consumption per line is only 1GB and therefore the company can hook up 100 lines to the 100GB pool. Since the pool already includes 50 lines for free, here's the math:

50 lines @$1000
50 Add a lines @ $250

for a grand total of 100 lines @$1,250 per month recurring charge. The effective rate therefore per line is $12.50 per line. Notice that if the customer had not optimized the pool and overestimates the data needs for the 50 lines, then the effective cost would have been $1000/50 lines = $20 per line. In other words, the customer would have over paid for a non-optimized pool of data. Therein lies the problem for the customer. A pooling plan therefore means possibly a loss of revenues for the customer, as in 2/3rd of the cases, the customers fail to optimize the pool. Some handy extra untended money for carriers but the plan is not customer friendly. It is difficult to understand and estimate capacities in advance.


So, what's the alternative. The idea we dreamt up was a stackable plan. Here's how a stackable plan works. Let's assume a customer wants to have the same 100 service lines as before. The customer roughly knows that the average data consumption per line is 1GB as before. In a stackable plan, the customer buys 100 1GB plans for $10 each for a total of $1000, the same monthly recurring charge as before. But, here's the fun part: All 100 lines can now share across this 100GB pool. If some lines consume more data, the other lines have to consume less to all total to 100GB. In effect, the effective cost per line now is $1000/100 lines = $10 per line for the same 100GB of shared data capacity. This solution saves the customer 20% over a fully optimized pool's and 50% over a non-optimized pool's effective per line charge. Further, a stackable plan allows the customer to add more lines or reduce lines at $10 per GB per line to increase or decrease the capacity. There is no room for non-optimization, the math is simple to understand, and the savings is there for all to see.

The federal government loved our stackable plans by the way.

Sensible pricing is what "Uncarrier" means - simplicity at lower costs is what the customer journey is all about. Ping me if you need more ideas here.