When telecom operators reach out to their customers, they should provide personalized and proactive contact that is simple, convenient, quick, efficient, trustworthy and transparent—all while being cool and fun. These are some of the points presented by Rob Rich, TM Forum’s managing director for insights research, during a webinar yesterday.
Rich highlighted that many of these attributes are imperatives for customer experience management programs going forward. As key capabilities, he also mentioned actionable intelligence, real time capabilities (e.g., selling, fulfillment, quality of experience monitoring/response, charging/cost management) and multi-channel integration.
During the webinar, a specialist commented that increasing customer satisfaction, reducing operating costs and growing revenues are among the top three drivers for the adoption of customer experience programs. Others mentioned differentiating from competitors and improving brand equity.
Among the top challenges for customer experience programs, Rich pointed to data integration, legacy system integration, cross-organization priorities, end-to-end control, critical skills availability, meeting cost/time goals and the functional fit of COTS (commercial off-the-shelf products). Rich also noted the critical success factors for customer experience programs: top management support, program governance/alignment, data management, critical skills availability and best practice guidelines.
Rich recommended that telecoms:
- focus on the total customer experience
- tailor programs to corporate strategy
- gain top management support
- remember that each customer is unique
- manage customer data as a corporate asset
- focus on program/change management
- make room for emerging tools
- take advantage of existing frameworks
- consider a continuous improvement approach
- manage for momentum
More news from the telecom analytics market:
—WatchGuard Technologies announced a zero-install, public and private, cloud-ready network security visibility solution. Called WatchGuard Dimension, it aims to add big data visibility tools to network security.
—Actian Corporation released the integration of ParAccel Big Data analytics platform to speed time to analytic value.
—The technology company MongoDB, which provides database services for businesses, secured $150 million in financing from investors such as Salesforce.com, Intel Capital and Sequoia Capital. MongoDB helps business clients store and process information in open-source databases.
—Allot and Openet are partnering to provide fixed broadband and mobile policy management solutions for TELE Greenland. The companies said that the joint solution will enhance customer experience while generating new revenue opportunities.
The RCR Wireless News telecom analytics series provides weekly insights on trends, new products and other topics that touch on the advantages and  monetization opportunities of analytics tools for telecom operators, including big data, business intelligence, customer experience analysis and management, business analytics and network analytics.
