Customer Experience Automation: Beyond the Order, Beyond the Trouble Ticket

By: Andy Hicks, Research Manager, EMEA, Telecoms, IDC

If your job involves talking to a lot of different people, you probably find that you end up saying a few things over and over just to lay the groundwork for whatever conversation you’re having. Since I’m a telecoms analyst, for example, I often find myself saying something like this:

“As an industry, we’re entering a whole new level of complexity on the IT side. We’re seeing an explosion of services, user types, devices, quality of service (QoS) levels and service level agreement (SLA) obligations. The permutations of all those factors make for more than any service provider can manage manually, so we’ll have to make sure that all that service and network management is automated to the maximum extent possible.”

So far, this is pretty unobjectionable stuff, and that’s the point. It’s something that most people in the industry can agree on before getting into specific cases. But as with its implementation, plans for automation vary both between carriers and within each one’s IT infrastructure. There is some common ground though. In the fulfillment part of the chain, one-touch provisioning and the like are generally accepted goals.

Where the promise of automation is still not as well understood, I believe, is in the service inventory, especially as it affects customer experience. Discussions of customer experience are often limited to either the fulfillment process (Is the order filled quickly and correctly?) and customer service (Is the problem resolved satisfactorily and cheaply?). Both the order and the trouble ticket are events, which are easier to measure and address. Extending the purview of customer experience to ongoing operations requires diagnosing and averting service problems before they affect customers. This requires systems to predict network and service outages in real time, and provision new resources to proactively fix the problem. The same components can also help engineers model the consequences of any changes to the system before they affect users.

The difference between “good enough” capabilities in this area and true differentiation in customer experience will increasingly inhere in the ability to model the effects of outages and planned changes alike on individual services and the individual customers that use them. Since each of those services is aggregate of smaller elements, and since the most valuable customers are likely to use the most services, a successful extension of the service inventory must be able to analyze the effects of system changes and failures not only on the network, but also on the services provided across it, especially as they affect the “gold” customer base. The criteria for that analysis will come from SLAs as well as service providers’ service assurance goals for each category of its users.

To date, Internet service providers and enterprise network providers seem to have more advanced offerings in these areas than mobile providers and fixed-line incumbents. As markets mature and competition in services increases from over-the-top (OTT) players, every service provider will have to improve its predictive and proactive capabilities to remain competitive in customer experience.

Andy Hicks covers telecom software, services, and business strategies in EMEA, with special focus on emerging markets, at IDC. Currently, he is focussing on the IT-ification of telecoms, the increasingly complex services market they compete in, and the work of multinational groups to rationalize their operations across borders.

Management World Americas Video: Diego Becker on Show Trends

Between meetings, presentations and all the other happenings at Management World Americas, we managed to steal a moment of time with Comptel’s vice president of the Caribbean and Latin America (CALA), Diego Becker, to discuss his thoughts on the event. Customer experience has been a common theme at the show, and in this short video, Diego expands on this and shares some thoughts on additional trends he’s seen arise from the event. Take a look at the below video for an update from the Management World Americas floor!

More from Management World Americas: Why Attend Tradeshows?

This was the question TM Forum’s president and CEO, Martin Creaner, posed during Tuesday’s keynote speech at Management World Americas in Orlando. He noted that almost everyone in the industry is aware of the current challenges facing and opportunities awaiting communications service providers (CSPs), from increasing pressure on revenues and the threat of cyber security, to the potential of data mining and the impact of new regulations. With competition at every turn, Creaner believes that CSPs must transform or risk being relegated into dumb pipe status—delivering someone else’s services to someone else’s customers for a low return.

And the real value of attending tradeshows and conferences isn’t to find out about these trends, but rather to explore how our peers are addressing them. And it seems that every CSP’s strategy is centered on growing new revenues while maintaining a superior customer experience.

CSPs are looking at innovative marketing techniques, new pricing models and more, in order to grow revenue and offset the erosion of traditional income streams. They’re also looking at innovative content services to generate complimentary additional revenue, with things like smart grids, M2M and mobile payments. These all have huge potential but also pose huge risks because, as Creaner said, you don’t know what you don’t know.

In that same vein, it’s a reality that OTT players and complex value chains have a distinct presence in the market, and the only way to assume a role here is if the CSP can add value. Creaner believes that the fact that CSPs own a network, or own lots of customers is not enough—to penetrate the OTT market, they will need to prove they are adding a particular value that the whole industry needs.

Ultimately, when it comes to maintaining and growing the customer experience, a holistic view is needed. CSPs must focus on end-to-end customer experience management and be in a position to manage service quality across the key value chains.

We’re excited to continue this conversation with colleagues and peers at the show, approaching Management World Americas and the ever-changing telecom world in general with an open mind.

Around the World

Connected Planet…
Analysis: Is Bill Shock Pressure Creating a Tipping Point for ‘Great’ Customer Service?
Alex Leslie predicts that customer experience will improve as a result of regulators’ efforts to lower bills for mobile usage. His article was published on the heels of new FCC and CTIA guidelines dictating that network operators send voice or text alerts to users as they approach data limits. Regulators in Australia, Asia and Europe are already following suit.

Even though regulations are often met with resistance, history shows that they can be beneficial in giving rise to improved solutions and services—and customer experiences. For example, previous rules about data usage and billing accuracy led to revenue assurance with communications service providers (CSPs) improving their billing strategies. Do you think history will repeat itself, with the new bill shock regulations opening opportunities for CSPs to differentiate themselves in the customer service department?

Light Reading…
Policy Is Still Strategic, But Changing
A survey by Heavy Reading shows that network operator executives expect policy management to gain importance, and predicts that a new generation of policy gear will be deployed to handle increased functionality. The survey results also reveal interest in using policy control to enable business models with third-party content, and mirror Comptel CEO Juhani Hintikka’s predictions that the next phase in policy control will take advantage of third-party applications with content prioritisation.

What these new business models require is more scalable policy technology that can integrate with charging and billing systems, so that operators have a wider range of triggers to drive policy, both in creating new services and in managing congestion.

Microsperience…
The Four Main Pillars of the Telecoms Customer Experience
Telecoms analyst Teresa Cottam writes that many CSPs are focusing on their own needs rather than looking at customer experience from the customer’s point of view. She says that there are four main pillars to the telecoms customer experience:

1)      Network Experience
2)      Commercial Experience
3)      Product Experience
4)      Service Experience

The pillars need to simultaneously work together while also being individually optimised in order to support the overall customer experience.  Even though customers should be the focus of the business, Teresa stresses that operators still need to be profitable. The key challenge is finding the right tools that will help CSPs improve customer engagement and at the same time, help them increase their revenue.

Customer Experience – The Final Frontier

Day one of a well-attended OSS-BSS World Summit in London, and the talk is all about customers. Networks, even handsets, are little mentioned, and bandwidth and bytes seem like yesterday’s unhealthy obsessions—the customer experience is now paramount, and henceforward, all shall be customer-centric.

Fine words and, many would argue, not before time—but what does it all mean in practise?

It could mean, as Charlie Hunter-Schyff, new media planning head of O2 demonstrated, applying analytics to location information to derive better-focused customer promotions. It could mean more sophisticated blending of policy control and charging functions to create a finer-tuned customer experience—an approach championed by Comptel. Less thrillingly, but perhaps more realistically, it could just mean, as indicated by Matthew Mason, director of billing and collections at Du in Dubai, and a compelling speaker, getting your act together in pretty much every department and making sure every process from order fulfillment through trouble ticketing to billing is as slick, faultless and efficient as it can be. That, after all, is what makes a customer perceive a company as excellent, and what makes customers stick around, spend money and even promote you to their friends. Perhaps this is the difference between having a customer-centric organisation and applying customer experience management (CEM).

What does it mean to software vendors? Really, it means that for any product or solution—not just CEM products—to be taken seriously, they need to be couched increasingly in the context of the customer experience. Does my fulfillment deliver a slicker, more faultless and trouble-free experience for my customer? Does my charging platform allow customers the payment options they appreciate? Is my policy control focused on the network or on my customers? Do all of these functions act together to allow me the holy grail of customer management, a ‘holistic’ customer view which pulls together customer information from CRM to HLR and lets me provide a wholly personalised service?

There is a compelling sense of real possibility around the customer, as Susan McNeice from Yankee Group observed in a speech at the end of the day. This feels like a real tipping point in industry attitudes and behaviour. Many communications service providers are genuinely and rightly excited by the prospect of turning to their advantage a customer understanding which would be the envy of most OTT players, and using it to create a value proposition for which the customer would be willing to pay a premium. They are sensing the possibilities—and now is the time for vendors to step up to the plate and demonstrate how they can be realised.

Five Ways to Enrich the Customer Experience

By Samantha Tanner, Telecoms IQ at IQPC

Customers are the most important part of a Communication Service Provider’s (CSP) business; after all, if a CSP doesn’t have any customers, they don’t have a business. Therefore, your customer experience strategy must reflect how important they are to you.

When putting together your customer experience model, take into consideration these five key aspects:

1. Emotions: Decide what emotions you are trying to invoke in your customers, and design an engaging customer experience around that.

Colin Shaw, founder of Beyond Philosophy believes that the process of turning customers into advocates has to be thought through—what does it mean to make them an advocate? What would it take to make them one?

According to Comptel’s CTO office director, Greg Scullard, the details of every event or transaction in customers’ lifecycles are key to winning hearts, minds and wallets.

2. Advocacy: Encourage advocacy by working toward a long-lasting customer relationship.

Andrew Williams, director of customer experience for Orange FT Group, believes that “the reason (advocacy is) important is that customers who are genuinely engaged with you and your service(s) are likely to stay longer and spend more money by buying more services or more expensive plans. But also, importantly, (customers) are prepared to go out there and tell their friends and family about what a great experience they’re having.”

3. Engagement: Actively seek out what services or actions will make your customers happy. Think about what your customers want and what they might require from you. For example, are they increasingly setting up smartphone plans? If so, one core desire will likely be fast data / Internet access.

Olivier Suard, marketing director at Comptel, explains that operators need to go the extra mile and be more interactive with their customers. By leveraging their OSS and network data, they can develop a complete picture of their customers’ behaviours, which will enable them to proactively engage with them, anticipate problems and ensure their satisfaction.

Likewise, be sure to listen to customers’ feedback. Subscribers are increasingly turning to social media as a customer service tool. Karl Whitelock, director, OSS/BSS business strategy, Stratecast agrees, finding that “what is most striking today is the speed with which customers react through social media. If a customer has a bad experience […] there can be a movement of thousands of others demanding a more equitable solution in just a few hours.” As mindsets change, so do the channels that customers want to be engaged through—be sure to listen and take note.

Dr. Nicola Millard, experience futurologist for BT Global Services, concurs: “The Internet’s given us a lot more choice than we used to have. So we’re seeing more people seeking advice via Googling or asking their social media connections. Often, the organisation is the last port of call.”

Image via TmoNews

4. Switch Focus: Change your mindset from being ROI-driven to being customer focused, and the ROI will come naturally.

Fifty percent of the customer experience is based on how the customer feels, explains Shaw. Relaying this message and integrating it into the way a company operates can be a challenge, especially when the overarching mindset is focused strictly on ROI. Because of this, he believes, it’s important to put yourself in the customers’ shoes. And over the past two years, , CSPs have really tried to focus on investing in customer care and driving brand loyalty rather than simply pushing products.

5. Never Be Satisfied: Keep going back to the drawing board and ask yourself if there is any way to further enrich or improve your customer experience.

Take, for example, Orange FT Group’s customer experience strategy. Every time a new product or service is launched the company maps out its customers’ journeys to try and understand what customers will want and what their needs are.

Emilie Smith, customer experience manager at Orange FT Group, says: “I think one of the things that we found is that sometimes there’s not an understanding across all areas of what actually happens, particularly at that beginning stage where a customer is doing his/her research. So, one of the things we do is take our staff back to being customers—we’ve seen that they then really understand the experience.”

In conclusion, if you want your customers to be loyal, and thus maximise revenue, work on your overall customer experience strategy. It goes a long way in portraying to your customers what kind of relationship you are hoping to build with them.

Around the World

CommsMEA…
Customer Acquisition
Consumer demand is forcing operators to look for new and creative ways to expand their businesses and generate profit. Some operators are increasing their network capacity to capitalize on the growing popularity of smart devices, such as the iPhone and iPad, and uptake of data services, while others are rethinking how to create loyalty and reduce churn through close customer focus.

As journalist Nithyasree Trivikram writes, in the Middle East, “where there are low-end subscribers and high penetration levels, there is more of a focus on strong distribution and active promotions” that target different customer segments. In comparison, with higher-end, mobile broadband services, operators will brand dongles and bundle them with value added services; for example, Vodafone Qatar offered free Facebook access to acquire customers and are also enhancing customer service by speaking over five languages in their call centres.

Moving forward, Nithyasree predicts that telcos will veer away from the primary role of network operators, and instead increase their focus on developing partnerships, digitizing the economy, and improving customer experience.

Total Telecom…
India May Auction More Wireless Broadband Spectrum
India’s Department of Telecommunications stated that it may auction more bandwidth for wireless broadband services. The main goal may be to boost the government’s finances; last year, the auctioning of two slots of wireless broadband brought in $8.23 billion. But, the operator benefits include the ability to provide high-speed Internet access as well as Internet telephony and television services. Auction winners can eventually use the bandwidth for voice and high-speed data services, as well. This is perhaps even more important as the future of more 2G and 3G bandwidth remains uncertain.

It will be interesting to see how this plan unfolds throughout the coming months. In a previous Around the World blog post, we highlighted India’s telecom landscape and the country’s insatiable demand for mobile communications services. This article is proof that legislation will play a big role in India’s future growth.

Computerworld…
Telco Cloud Providers Must Partner with IT Services Players: Ovum
According to a new report from analyst firm Ovum, telcos face operational challenges when it comes to offering cloud services. Ovum analyst and report author Mark Giles believes that operators have focused on getting cloud services to market quickly rather than on the complex and timely process of adapting their existing OSS/BSS to fit a cloud delivery model. But, the analyst notes, telcos can truly make their mark in the cloud by bringing internal network and IT teams together and collaborating with IT providers.

However, not everyone agrees with Ovum’s views. Alex Leslie of Connected Planet thinks that the analyst firm “missed the mark” and over-generalised in its report. He argues that telcos have invested in OSS/BSS technologies like real-time charging and policy control in order to support cloud’s on-demand service delivery model. Which opinion do you agree with?

Recapping the SIMposium, Berlin, 28-29 June

Last week, I travelled to Berlin for SIMposium 2011, organised by SIMalliance in partnership with Informa Telecoms & Media. The conference was a great platform for hearing about new contactless technologies, discussing emerging business models and addressing market challenges and the opportunities of machine-to-machine (M2M) for specific enterprise verticals.

Over the course of the two days, it became clear that Near Field Communications (NFC), M2M and handling identity/security were the primary topics of conversation. For starters, NFC was displayed in many context-enabling solutions; these ranged from e-wallet services all the way to public transportation payment systems. Now that NFC pilots are showing promise on the commercial side, it seems that solution providers’ imaginations are flying high! It will certainly be interesting to see what else is rolled out in the coming months. However, the key to future NFC uptake and to these projects being successful will be to make the solution benefits clear to end-users without making things overly technical.

M2M was also on every operator’s lips at SIMposium. There was a clear consensus that M2M will happen in a major way. Most operators believe that the challenges of M2M are different from those on the consumer side, and to address these, there needs to be a dedicated organization, network infrastructure and offering. Furthermore, M2M customers are looking for global connectivity, which means partnering (and possibly unified roaming pricing) for operators.

The first industry to make M2M really happen might be automotive and transportation, with the legislation in Europe (eCall) and Brasil (Resolution 245) being main drivers for the deployment. M2M is clearly made for verticals that represent different niches, which naturally makes things more complex for operators. Standardisation will help somewhat, but as one operator said at the event, the market is not waiting for standardisation.

Soft SIMs versus SIM cards was another very hot topic during the two-day event. The general view at the conference seemed to be that soft SIMs will gain popularity, but the security provided by regular SIM cards is currently far better. Managing SIMs’ identities securely via over-the-air (OTA) is increasingly important, especially as embedded SIMs become more attractive, because OTA is the only way to handle them. It became clear at SIMposium that SIM-based identity is a key concern for operators, and that there always will be a compromise between security and usability, no matter what the solution is. (One interesting application of note was SIM-based authentication to log on to Wi-Fi networks; in essence, the Wi-Fi customer experience needs to be as seamless as the 3G customer experience.)

Although NFC, M2M and identity management/security were top of mind, it seemed that many SIMposium attendees debated removable versus embedded SIMs—but there are clear benefits for both. For removable SIMs, the ease of switching from one device to another is undeniable; however, embedded SIMs can be placed on devices more freely without relying on ports to access them.

The SIM partner ecosystem is visibly growing, as evident with representatives from card manufacturers, device management vendors and operators, among others, in attendance at last week’s event. Comptel is very excited about this area—feel free to share your thoughts or questions about the market or the conference with us in the comments section.

Survey Says: Close Customer Focus and Real-Time Data Analysis Key

In addition to organising an industry analyst day and customer / partner presentations, Comptel moderated an interactive session focused on the customer experience during last month’s Comptel User Group (CUG). The session, which involved our partners Cisco and Alcatel-Lucent, surveyed nearly 100 attendees on the evolving state of the customer experience, the role network and other service data and OSS play, and the significant potential revenue opportunities for communications service providers (CSPs). Like our past research, it yielded quite interesting results!

Respondents first indicated that they believe CSPs, when compared to over-the-top (OTT) players, device manufacturers and operating system companies, provide the best customer experience. However, as Cisco’s Russ Kaufmann brought up, OTT players have a head start in providing good customer experience for cloud services. Alcatel-Lucent’s Pierre Dubost also made a good point—if asked the question of who provides the best customer experience two years ago, there likely would have been a very different answer. But, CSPs are really trying to invest in customer care and focus on driving brand loyalty rather just pushing products.

Supporting this, nine out of ten participants pointed to customer experience management as one of the major factors contributing to operators’ survival and success—because as Kaufmann pointed out, when things do go wrong, it can greatly affect churn. These responses support those of a Comptel-sponsored Vanson Bourne survey, which previously identified customer experience management as a significant potential revenue opportunity. Eighty-seven percent of consumers said that their quality of experience influences their allegiance to their CSP, and the majority of them would not only move but also pay more money for faster, more personalised services.

While the importance of a high customer experience was clear, there was general agreement that it’s difficult to determine what exactly will satisfy each customer. More than half (55%) of participants indicated that network performance has the greatest influence on the customer experience, yet all of the other responses varied. Dubost was right in saying that all of these factors are impactful—ultimately, CSPs require a holistic view of customer behaviour in order to better manage (and take the necessary actions to ensure) the customer experience.

Clearly aligned in thought, 100% of survey respondents recognised the value of leveraging network and other service data and their OSS; however, only about one-third of CSPs noted that they are fully utilising this information. There is a huge opportunity for operators to gain superior insight into customers and improve end-users’ experiences. With real-time data analysis and a close customer focus, CSPs can also boost their bottom lines, for example, through profiling for targeted marketing campaigns and traffic shaping for premium services.

Comptel is excited to see how operators take advantage of the opportunities a real-time, interactive and personalised OSS platform presents. What do you think of the interactive session discussion? For more information about the survey results, please contact comptel.marketing@comptel.com.

Around the World

Connected Planet…
The Singular Solution to Bill Shock: Think Like the Customer Thinks
Alex Leslie discusses bill shock and the various approaches operators are exploring to avoid it. In light of increasing mobile network use while abroad, some companies are looking into charging for content per email, game or app instead of buying bandwidth in a bundle, but due to the variety of actions and complexity of pricing each one, this isn’t ideal. Another option involves implementing a flat-rate data plan; this may be attractive to operators but compromises network quality by the few users who consume too much bandwidth. And although it might seem like a perfect solution, capping network usage often leaves customers wary about watching what they eat. As Alex states, whatever the bill shock solution may be, operators should make it a priority to put themselves in their customers’ shoes. Bill shock can have a heavy impact on the customer experience, and it more than often leaves a bad taste in subscribers’ mouths. As we discussed at the Comptel User Group, operators really need a real-time, interactive and personalised OSS platform that can deliver superior insight into customers’ wants and needs, proactively manage their frustrations and prevent churn—all to improve their experience.