Customer experience management, and providing customers with the best possible service, is always an important consideration; however, according to recent conversations with our telco customers and other network providers, savings to Opex remain at the forefront of 2014 priorities.
Whilst some Communications Service Providers (CSPs) seem naïve to the impact poor service can have – EE customers were left not being able to use their mobile phones for four days this month – others have taken great strides to fulfil the ‘anytime, anywhere’ network promise.
This focus on cost savings, and simultaneous pressure to meet the demands to improve customer experience, are putting our industry under immense pressure, and causing hugely conflicting priorities.
However, it has not been all bad news for all operators this week. Vodafone was recognised as M2M ‘Industry Icon’ by Analysys Mason with Morgan Mullooly, Analyst for Analysys Mason’s Enterprise and M2M research stream, commenting, “The global outlook for Vodafone’s M2M business is very positive. We are impressed with its focus on Customer Experience Management and by the way it is adapting to local requirements to realise the huge potential in these markets.”
Another CSP taking the initiative when it comes to improving the customer experience is Swisscom; it recently worked with us to integrate the service management layer within the resource management layer (provided by IBM Tivoli NetCool OMNIbus). This type of project means the service management teams are alerted to high profile issues, massively impacting their ability to deal with potential customer issues quickly.
The integration was based on SysMech’s Zen technology, which allows administrators to define on-the-fly filters and mappings of alarms without interruption to service. Within one year of integration, the project had paid for itself, resolving the savings versus service conflict.
If customer experience management is a priority for you in 2014, but you don’t know how to spend and save, we’d like to hear your thoughts.
To find out more about the challenge faced by Swisscom and the benefits that Zen provided, read the case study.