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CEM – RETENTION FEATURE


Common sense—and numerous balance


sheets—argue that there are great savings to be made by tackling customer restlessness before it gets too late, with a proactive focus through analytics.


devices on which they’ve come to rely,” he says. Moreover, in light of the smartphone and


operator to get on the front foot and intervene to get a specialist on the phone and fix the problem with the customer,” he says. “No one takes this lightly. This is all about insight and about what we can change. Most customers expect problems but it’s how those problems are rectified that matters.” But the operator’s role as a problem solver


raises another interesting paradigm. The ar- rival of the smartphone changed the entire landscape of customer experience manage- ment, and with a plethora of increasingly com- plex connected devices entering the market, user expectations have risen dramatically. No longer content with a desire to make calls and send text messages, telco customers now expect to tech support and troubleshooting advice from anything to in-car communica- tions systems to ‘connected home’ gadgets like set top boxes or smart meters. The issue being that if they don’t get everything they expect from their connected gadgets, they point the finger squarely at the provider of that connection the operator. According to Tim Deluca-Smith, VP for marketing at WDS, if mobile operators want to provide unparalleled customer service and capitalise on the opportunity the connected home concept offers, they will need to start getting more creative, and generous, with their data sharing policies, as this will make the customer’s life much easier. “Consumers don’t want to consciously think


about the device or network to which they’re at- tached. They want to buy a data allowance and use it, at their discretion, across the multiple


application store revolution, the same argu- ment applies to content as much as to devices. Given that operators are now in many cases editorialising content for consumers, they are in a position where they can use this hand holding to their advantage in terms of customer satisfaction. Indeed, Thomas Schöpf, COO of integrator Kapsch CarrierCom, believes operators should be looking to develop their own content or form a partnership giving ac- cess to good content for their users. The point is well supported by Alcatel-


Lucent’s, Ben Geller, senior director of solu- tions marketing, who believes operators have all recognised that at some point they are going to have to foster some pretty compelling partnerships because they can’t be all things to all people. “There is a desire to truly own that customer experience and OTT players are not equipped with the infrastructure required to provide a world class experience. Opera- tors can keep themselves at the heart of the relationship and add value too.” Informa’s 2012 Outlook survey, which high-


lighted the intention of carriers to address the area of customer experience over the coming year, also discovered that the single most im- portant asset for a service provider building a content ecosystem is the billing relationship, with 40 per cent of responses—more than twice the number for the next most significant element—ownership of customer data. “The real USP of the operator today is that


it owns the customers through billing and customer care. It’s no longer the basic network because at the end of the day anyone can run


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a network and take advantage of your rollout and your coverage,” says Schöpf of Kapsch Car- rierCom, referring to the over the top players. “Through billing expertise operators can offer much more charging for third party content for example. Users aren’t interested in having several accounts with several different provid- ers. They want one bill, one point of contact and one system for customer care.” It’s the market that is changing, according to


Michal Harris of Amdocs, and providers need to change their model to focus on the network experience. “If providers say ‘my core value is the network, this is what I do best,’ then they should do their best to sell the network to the end user or a third party.” The network should be the enabler and in reference to the OTT guys, there are plenty of companies willing to provide the experience to the end user. By acting as a gatekeeper, the operator is


rewarded with total ownership of the customer and all the trappings and information that go with it. On the one hand, the sea change in busi- ness strategy is still held back by technological hangovers such as the persistence of post and pre pay billing, which codifies who you are as a customer and defines the entire user experience when it really is just a payment mechanism that has been shaped by technology. In essence, operators have tied up the customer experience with things that aren’t that important users are just after a service after all. But the knowledge consistency of the opera-


tor-gatekeeper means that telcos have access to so much knowledge and with such an integrated profile of the customer, that Amdocs’s Harris believes they can compete against the databases nurtured by Facebook and Google. As the CEO of a tier one operator in France


recently commented during a survey on customer experience carried out by Informa: “Good Customer retention practice is about business culture, not technology.” n


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