CSPs Must Deliver Superior Customer Experience

White Paper

CSPs Must Deliver Superior Customer

Experience

Prepared by

Ari Banerjee, Senior Analyst

Sarah Wallace, Analyst

Heavy Reading

www.heavyreading.com

in conjunction with

www.comverse.com

June 2013

http://www.heavyreading.com/

http://www.comverse.com/

HEAVY READING | JUNE 2013 | WHITE PAPER | CSPS MUST DELIVER SUPERIOR CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE 2

Executive Summary In today's telco environment, data usage is accelerating, faster networks are

rolling out and smart devices are becoming more ubiquitous. In parallel, customers

have more choices: a choice of communications service provider (CSP), a choice

of interaction method, a choice of over-the-top (OTT) services, etc. If that's not

enough, customers' expectations have been raised – in part due to the "always

on" Internet experience.

CSPs, which wish to both retain customers and persuade them to be advocates,

are well aware of increasing demands, but meeting those demands is easier said

than done, as they grapple with disparate, siloed legacy systems that are not

supporting the customer experience – and the business – well. When updating

systems, CSPs will have to keep in mind consistency across all lines of business and

customer channels, as well as find a way to make sense of the copious amounts of

subscriber data coming from many sources.

And while the network and service delivery in general remain important to the

customer experience, focusing only on network metrics, such as quality of service

(QoS), is not enough. Actionable analytics and intelligent policy management

can be used to deliver an overall better customer experience. Other key elements

include increased real-time handling, giving more control to the customer, and

providing personalized and enriched services. On the back end, coordination and

automation will help provide a seamless experience to the subscriber. CSPs have

no choice but to be proactive in adopting new approaches so as to be able to

provide an optimal customer experience. Otherwise, they risk losing subscribers or

alienating potential promoters.

On the upside, unlike OTT companies, CSPs have the opportunity to capture and

understand many more of the events that can affect the customer experience in

time to influence that experience for the best. Greater attention to customer

experience is also an imperative if operators are to develop two-sided business

models in which they deliver third-party services.

CSPs should look to vendors that are experienced with multiple aspects of the

customer experience – service delivery, care, marketing, billing and the like – to

help them make the transition from disparate systems to a cohesive ecosystem

with the customer at the center.


Key Dimensions of Customer Experience CSPs are looking for the next big thing to differentiate themselves from their

competitors. When every operator has similar networks and services, they can only

separate themselves from the pack by offering a superior customer experience.

The company that manages to do so can be more efficient, more proactive and

ultimately more innovative than its competitors.

The concept of customer experience management can be broken down into four

dimensions: anticipating, controlling, responding to and optimizing the customer

experience. These management activities have different timescales associated

with them, although there is a trend toward accelerating the ability to carry out

these activities from days or weeks to near real time.

Since communications services operate in real time, the impact on customer

experience is more immediate than in many other industries. The CSP that best

anticipates end-customer requirements, improves responsiveness and provides a

more personalized level of service is intelligently managing its customer's experi-

ence and should reap the benefits in terms of lower operational costs, increased

customer loyalty and higher profitability.

Figure 1 is based on a recent Heavy Reading survey of 70 unique global operators

that highlights the key activities CSPs believe are critical for providing a superior

customer experience.

Figure 1: Activities CSPs Believe Are Crucial to Deliver Superior Customer Experience

Source: Heavy Reading


CSPs acknowledge that they need to understand their customers' individual

experiences in a timely manner (82 percent) and on a continuous basis as they

interact with their organizations both on- and off-net. A timely approach puts CSPs

in the best position to manage all the moving parts that can affect the customer

experience, including the network, services, subscriber devices and contact

center interactions. The ability to capture and understand the events that can

affect the customer experience in time to influence and optimize that experience

is a major source of differentiation for CSPs.

Respondents also view order fulfillment as important to customer service (81

percent), as an efficient order fallout management system ensures that order

failures are detected and corrected early for prompt provisioning of customer

service. The handling of Big Data is also viewed as important (80 percent), as CSPs

realize that they must leverage all the data they have on a subscriber in order to

provide optimal customer service.

From the subscribers' point of view, subscribers want service availability and QoS,

and they want to be able to conveniently manage their account through any

channel. Subscribers also want CSPs to recognize them as an individual, so that

the CSP can anticipate their unique needs, personalize their experience and fix

their issues even before their service experience is impacted. Figure 2 looks at key

customer experience aspects as perceived by subscribers along with their main

characteristics that will help provide superior customer experience.

So in comparing the two points of view, CSPs seem to understand what their

customers want; now it is just a matter of getting up to speed to meet these

needs. CSPs must update their systems to meet the demands of customers, or they

will lose them to more competent competition.

Figure 2: Key Customer Experience Aspects From the Subscriber Point of View



Experience Measurement Heavy Reading's research in the customer experience space points to a few

gaping holes in CSP strategies. Most CSPs capture very network-centric and call

center-specific KPIs that do not paint the full picture of the end-user experience.

However, today leading operators are beginning to use Net Promoter Score (NPS)

and other more holistic metrics to measure customer experience. Figure 3 shows

the KPIs that CSPs believe are critical for them to measure customer experience.

CSPs' customer experience strategy needs to be transformative and should be

able to anticipate, contextualize and preempt customer complaints and queries

and be able to effectively address subscribers' challenges. Though most of the

customer experience metrics identified in Figure 3 are well understood, there are

some emerging underlying trends that should be further discussed:

Net Promoter Score (NPS): NPS has been gaining traction for measuring brand

loyalty and advocacy among CSPs. The concept of NPS is used to ascertain how

customers feel about the services they are receiving from a brand, in a bid to turn

potential detractors into promoters and brand advocates. From an industry

benchmark standpoint, the NPS ranking of the communications industry is much

lower than other industry verticals – clearly indicating that CSPs have a lot of work

to do to convert customers into brand advocates. NPS is becoming an important

metric for measuring customer experience by most CSPs, and many CMOs are

being measured internally with respect to their organization's NPS score.

Anticipating and responding to social channels: Social media plays a critical role

as consumers might start their research for any product on a social website and

consider their friends' suggestions on Facebook or Twitter, compare product or

services online and research further on blogs such as Yelp before actually making

buying decisions in the store. From a CSP standpoint, they need the ability to

manage their brand on the social channels and also proactively engage with

their customers by providing social listening and monitoring capabilities.

Figure 3: Customer Experience KPIs



Evolving Market Dynamics No Longer Allow

Customer Experience to Be Piecemeal Let us take a look at some of the key trends that are shaping the communications

industry today and directly or indirectly influencing CSPs thinking to put focus on

the customer experience:

Mobile broadband: As mobile broadband usage continues to increase, subscrib-

ers need to have a clear awareness of how much they have used to prevent bill

shock. CSPs need to enable sophisticated management of traffic and entitle-

ments across devices and family members and be transparent about their data

offerings and roaming, or else dissatisfied customers will become angry and churn.

Device proliferation: Subscribers today consume data services across multiple

devices. They manage their data on devices such as their tablets and laptops,

gaming devices and Internet-enabled TVs. In terms of customer experience, issues

such as QoS, billing and quota management need to be managed holistically

across multiple devices.

Personalization: Subscribers today expect offerings that are relevant for their likes

and preferences, such as video sharing, online gaming or live content streaming,

and not simply tailored around rigid bandwidth or quota levels. CSPs need to

support that and be able to create efficient customer loyalty programs that can

enable customer stickiness.

Demand for cross-channel consistency: Heavy Reading's research shows that for

most CSPs, customer interactions aren't coordinated across channels, forcing

customers to repeat themselves as they move between service/support channels

– a customer dis-satisfier for sure. In our survey, more than 70 percent of wireless

operators admitted they do not pass along customer information from one touch

point to another, and an overwhelming 82 percent of consumers reported they

had to repeat their information in a multi-touch buying process. Tomorrow's market

winners should be able to deliver a cross-channel experience that provides the

same seamless experience to customers, regardless of whether it is via the Web,

smartphone or retail kiosk.

OTT-like experience: Giant OTT players are shaping user expectations of how

services should be delivered, consumed and experienced. For example, when

subscribers are connected to the Internet, they expect to use services on any

device and network, anywhere in the world. CSPs attempting to deliver a superior

customer experience must ensure they provide their users an OTT-like experience –

by modernizing their traditional voice and messaging services. In addition, the

emergence of OTT providers has increased the pressure from marketing depart-

ments for innovative services and pricing plans. 4G service offerings such as high-

definition video, music, gaming, IP telephony, mobile TV, mobile applications and

voice over LTE (VoLTE) might help combat the OTT threat, but they also make

supporting the demands of customers more complex.

Social media: In a world where more and more customers interact and talk about

their experiences and issues online, online brand management has become big

business. CSPs that ignore what customers say about them in unstructured envi-

ronments risk swift and widespread brand damage. Making sense of structured

and unstructured data to understand the mood and transaction pattern of

customers in real time is therefore critical, as is social network and sentiment


analysis. This will help CSPs to take preventative actions to avoid churn or customer

dissatisfaction, by providing preemptive service assurance and using feedback

and sentiment to better understand their customers' preferences and enhance

their personalized offerings.

Even when facing the trends listed above, customer experience is still being

tackled piecemeal by individual functional groups or solutions within the CSP.

Hence, CSPs are often falling short on delivering a superior customer experience

due to the following reasons:

Lack of communications between supporting customer experience pillars

(such as the ones described in the next section). This results in the lack of

automation, which is especially crucial when trying to create efficiencies

across various domains and systems.

Inability to pull together customer insights from multiple sources such as

network and BSS elements, and to act upon them in real time.

Inability to minimize manual effort in troubleshooting or resolving issues.


Pillars of a Superior Customer Experience It is clear that all parts of the CSP's organization affect the customer experience –

from CRM-oriented interactions, such as whether a call center agent is helpful, to

infrastructure management-oriented events, such as whether a service is running

at five-nines availability, transactions on a home location register are peaking or a

cell site is reaching overload. However, it's important to identify the fundamental

pillars of superior experience delivery.

While customer care and service delivery (from the network to QoS to service

delivery engines) have always been and will remain pillars of the overall customer

experience, they will need to evolve and adapt to the emerging trends discussed

above. And, today perhaps more than ever, the charging and billing aspects of

the customer relationship drive the experience, so it is really the business support

system (BSS) – with customer care as a subset – that is a pillar.

At the same time, emerging trends demand that new solution pillars such as policy

management and analytics be made a part of the foundation.

Ranging throughout the entire ecosystem, from network to IT and business, each

of the solution pillars mentioned brings its own dimensions to the customer experi-

ence milieu.

Let us take a look at those pillars and the steps operators should take to harness

them to deliver a superior customer experience and contribute to the aforemen-

tioned characteristics of anticipation, control, responsiveness and optimization to

enhance the customer experience.

BSS Pillar

Add social elements to customer interactions: With users spending considerable

time at social networking sites, they are developing habits and expectations that

CSPs need to understand – and emulate. Many users today are more comfortable

posting a question than calling the call center. CSPs need to meet these expecta-

tions by adding social dimensions to their customer care solutions – automatically

monitoring and analyzing social interactions. Moreover, CSPs should utilize social

channels to drive more personalized campaigns, leveraging new information such

as interest groups, fan pages, devices, etc. Delivering smarter customer interac-

tions will result in financial gain for CSPs – less churn, fewer call-center calls,

increased subscriptions, etc. – as well as indirect benefits such as NPS improve-

ment, increased customer satisfaction and increased first-call resolution.

Ensure real-time collection, processing and evaluation of event data: Real-time

interaction and response has a bearing on every aspect of the customer experi-

ence. Since customer experience is multi-faceted, data must be gathered from

multiple sources, such as previous brand interactions, retail and e-commerce

touch points, call-center data, interactive voice response, mobile devices and

even social networks. Given the volume of factors that shape a customer's

experience and buying behavior – reading and analyzing blogs, comparing

prices, searching on different channels, etc. – the overall data set is bound to be

extremely large, and the ability to collect this data in real time is crucial.

Provide dynamic account control: To ensure customer satisfaction, CSPs need to

allow subscribers to control and adjust their offerings and entitlements. For exam-


ple, subscribers approaching their usage limit should be able to choose whether

they want to temporarily upgrade their plan or pay per usage; others asking to

watch a live sports game should be able to instantly enhance their allocated

bandwidth, etc. Enabling customers to set (for themselves or their family members)

balance and usage thresholds as well as notification and alerts policies can

enhance customer satisfaction while ensuring a truly personalized experience.

Service Delivery Pillar

Beyond network QoS and service assurance, service delivery must transform to

provide the everywhere experience: As OTT players shape user expectations, CSPs

need to enable subscribers to access both traditional services such as voice and

messaging, as well as new rich communications services from anywhere in the

world using any type of device (mobile phone, tablet, PC) and network (3G, Wi-Fi,

fixed, etc.). This is essential as the world makes a phased transition to 4G/all-IP.

Modernize traditional communications services: To maintain service relevancy,

CSPs must create a user experience strong enough to keep subscribers from going

elsewhere. This can be achieved by modernizing their services with multi-device,

Web access capabilities and rich user interfaces.

Policy Management as a New Pillar

Accelerate introduction of new data offerings: In this era of growing demand for IP

services, policy management plays a pivotal role in the definition of subscribers'

overall quality of experience, enabling dynamic assignments of service entitle-

ments as well as QoS levels. CSPs attempting to deliver most value to subscribers

will need to closely align policy solutions with charging, supporting accelerated

time to market for new offers as well as a more holistic view of the subscriber. CSPs

must leverage both network and IT information to provide the customer with the

best possible experience.

Analytics as a New Pillar

Introduce relevant, personalized plans and offerings: In a recent Heavy Reading

survey, 40 percent of consumers say that they like to receive personalized offers

from their service provider. Tools such as predictive analytics can use dynamic

profiling to analyze incoming data sources such as customer care, product/

service/device portfolios, cost and billing, and network service quality to segment

customers. Customers can be segmented by usage, interests, location, socioeco-

nomic status, propensity to churn and influence in their network.


Break Down the Silos A unified approach to customer experience – across all foundation pillars – is the

need of the hour. It is in the best interest of CSPs to look for unified solutions, as

siloed solutions can only paint a partial picture of customer experience and result

in suboptimal results.

CSPs have traditionally operated with a complex, disparate set of silos, including

CRM, billing, inventory, provisioning and fulfillment, service management systems,

network management systems and the different generations of network architec-

ture – each holding different types of data, in different formats and with different

business goals. This must change if a CSP is to truly deliver a superior experience.

A unified, holistic approach across all lines of business will allow for end-to-end

insight and communication with individual subscribers. For example, as operators

move forward with their interest in policy and charging, they should keep other

lines of business and parts of the back-office in mind, as it will be crucial that they

all work as a whole.

So CSPs that already have or are implementing an analytics solution should ensure

that it is closely aligned with their policy management and charging solutions. This

is an example of breaking through the silos, because an analytics-driven ap-

proach to policy management and charging will enhance customer experience

by building services, taking into account subscriber behavior and creating and

launching personalized offers to customers based on analytics.

Unification also enables automation, which is both efficient and should have a

positive effect on the customer experience. For example, with a unified system, a

CSP can run a marketing campaign that automatically pulls data from customer

and billing databases, while using analytics to define relevant target segments.


Vendor Analysis – Comverse Comverse helps CSPs enhance the customer experience by facilitating smart

customer interactions and account control; allowing rapid rollout of relevant,

personalized plans and offerings; and enabling enriched communications services

that can interoperate across devices and networks.

The breadth of the Comverse portfolio enables CSPs to tackle customer experi-

ence holistically; addressing various aspects as described in Figure 4 below.

Comverse provides telecom business enablement solutions that support service

innovation and smart monetization. A robust portfolio of products and services

helps operators transition to an all-IP world, capture a winning role in new value

chains through service and business model innovation and enhance the customer

experience. Solutions cover BSS, policy management, digital services and value-

added services.

Figure 4: Customer Experience Is Everywhere

Source: Comverse


Conclusion CSPs see customer experience as a key way of differentiating their brands in highly

competitive markets where rivals offer similar services and have the same network

capabilities. Our research has shown that customer experience management is a

journey and will always remain a work in progress. Embodying the principle of

continuous improvement, dazzling the customer will always require further evolution.

Many CSPs are linking their customer experience initiatives with business transfor-

mation activities, as they seek to become partners and enablers of their custom-

ers' "digital lives." In order to accelerate telco responsiveness to the customer

experience, decisions need to be made more quickly and cost-effectively, and,

whenever possible, automated. For example, intelligence from supporting

customer experience pillars should be able to determine how to heal a network

fault without human intervention; or what the appropriate response to a customer

experiencing difficulties should be – for example, automatically launching a

campaign or providing the right self-service guidance.

This automation requires tight integration between systems that create intelligence

and systems that support customer-related business processes – OSS/BSS, policy

control, service delivery, analytics, etc. At this stage of the market, CSPs face the

challenge of implementing the right blend of customer experience-supporting

solutions that will enable the automation of management actions.

CSPs Must Deliver Superior Customer Experience

Technology

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