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Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Managing Beyond the CPE – Home Networking
I just picked up my iPhone 3G S last month at the AT&T store after a 30 minute wait to talk to the sales guy. It always amazes me that the AT&T retail stores are less efficient than the folks processing drivers license renewals at the DMV. It’s great to have a lock on the iPhone market. As I stood in line gradually losing patience with the staff’s lack of urgency to the dozen or so customers waiting in line I realized that a lot more than selling was going on. Three of the five staff was helping consumers set-up email or providing other technical support functions. It was the geek squad for iPhones. AT&T Wireless is much more than a mobile wireless operator. It is a help desk for Apple!
This type of blending of sales and support for a more complex eco-system in the mobile world is also unfolding in the consumer fixed broadband market. But the stakes here are much higher because you need to support not just one device but many in the home. Once IPTV moves beyond the early adopter phase, the support cost curve will climb exponentially.
Customer experience is sometimes lost in the banter around channel changes and video pixilation as hard metrics to measure quality of service. What will CSPs do when a customer calls in to complain that video doesn’t work yet all the dashboards in the operation centers are green? Consumers that still can’t program their DVR’s are not about to embrace a CSR in India to remotely troubleshoot their video problem.
Growth in advanced consumer services will languish until CSPs get serious about managing the home network. Standards such as TR-069 is a good start but more needs to be done to move the demarcation point beyond the CPE. The residential broadband was an active segment a few years ago but growth has lagged in subscriber net adds and revenue increases in the past several years. Some of this is due to the fact that activation and remote testing capabilities have improved for the large CSPs so the need has diminished. With new services such as VoIP now and IPTV in the next year to move beyond mass market adoption - we expect net-adds to ramp up quickly. I put some forecast out in this area last month and will be doing more in the next 8 weeks to peel the onion back on home network management.
This type of blending of sales and support for a more complex eco-system in the mobile world is also unfolding in the consumer fixed broadband market. But the stakes here are much higher because you need to support not just one device but many in the home. Once IPTV moves beyond the early adopter phase, the support cost curve will climb exponentially.
Customer experience is sometimes lost in the banter around channel changes and video pixilation as hard metrics to measure quality of service. What will CSPs do when a customer calls in to complain that video doesn’t work yet all the dashboards in the operation centers are green? Consumers that still can’t program their DVR’s are not about to embrace a CSR in India to remotely troubleshoot their video problem.
Growth in advanced consumer services will languish until CSPs get serious about managing the home network. Standards such as TR-069 is a good start but more needs to be done to move the demarcation point beyond the CPE. The residential broadband was an active segment a few years ago but growth has lagged in subscriber net adds and revenue increases in the past several years. Some of this is due to the fact that activation and remote testing capabilities have improved for the large CSPs so the need has diminished. With new services such as VoIP now and IPTV in the next year to move beyond mass market adoption - we expect net-adds to ramp up quickly. I put some forecast out in this area last month and will be doing more in the next 8 weeks to peel the onion back on home network management.
Its not about the bike
July is one of my favorite months – not just because of the long days of summer but because I get to kick back at the end of the day and catch the Tour de France highlights on Versus. This year all of France and the cycling world are buzzing about the return of Lancelot. Seven time winner, cancer survivor, and just back on the bike from a broken collarbone in March during the Vuelta of Castilla. What is amazing is 37 year old Armstrong is still in contention for the maillot jaune after 9 stages against teammate and favorite to win Alberto Contador. I’m happy to look beyond the last three years of doping scandals and watch the 96th tour unfold and decide who the best man is on July 26 in Paris.
The tour in all its glory cannot be won without the support of the team. In cycling the term “Domestiques” is applied to the 7 other riders that provide tactical support for its lead rider against opposing teams. A similar sort of relationship is unfolding in the telecommunications market. Competition brings increased focus on the customer. Operations, IT, customer care, and product marketing must work together to support the demands of the customer.
The focus of the past 20 years was on technology and how to build the most reliable, fault tolerant network to provide voice and data services. The next 20 years will focus on the customer. This will take the form of personalization, lifestyle, and seamless integration with voice, video, and data. Just like the domestiques in cycling, each group within the CSP must look beyond their own walls to win mindshare and marketshare.
The Nextgen Telecom Software Strategies blog will look at future software architecture, CSP approaches, emerging technologies, new services, and the systems in the global marketplace. Look for a rotating schedule of weekly blogs from our analyst team that addresses the issues facing business, operations, and IT groups and the strategies that we see gaining success in the telecommunication market.
The tour in all its glory cannot be won without the support of the team. In cycling the term “Domestiques” is applied to the 7 other riders that provide tactical support for its lead rider against opposing teams. A similar sort of relationship is unfolding in the telecommunications market. Competition brings increased focus on the customer. Operations, IT, customer care, and product marketing must work together to support the demands of the customer.
The focus of the past 20 years was on technology and how to build the most reliable, fault tolerant network to provide voice and data services. The next 20 years will focus on the customer. This will take the form of personalization, lifestyle, and seamless integration with voice, video, and data. Just like the domestiques in cycling, each group within the CSP must look beyond their own walls to win mindshare and marketshare.
The Nextgen Telecom Software Strategies blog will look at future software architecture, CSP approaches, emerging technologies, new services, and the systems in the global marketplace. Look for a rotating schedule of weekly blogs from our analyst team that addresses the issues facing business, operations, and IT groups and the strategies that we see gaining success in the telecommunication market.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
It’s Not About the Network – Customers Reign Supreme in Future Communications Market
In the telecommunications market services are transitioning from simple voice and data communication towards more personalized, multimedia based services delivered over many different access channels. In the consumer market, communications service providers (CSPs) are moving from mobile voice and messaging services to more advance multimedia services that provide internet browsing, music downloads, and video services. The CSPs that deliver a unique, superior telecommunications service can expect loyal customers willing to pay more for the service.
CEM is the ability to manage each interaction between the subscriber and the CSP in the order, fulfillment, billing, customer care, and assurance of services consumed. CEM is a strategic approach taken by the CSP to augment business processes and integrate a myriad of data sets and software systems to positively impact the subscribers’ experience. In order for a business to assess the customer experience, each interaction must be managed across each part of the business where the customer evaluates, orders, uses, and makes payment for the product or service.
The market forces increasing the awareness of customer experience are in part being driven by the commoditization of telecoms services – primarily voice and the threat posed by new participants in the telecommunications economy that offer premium services over a broadband network. The threat posed by new participants in the economy that offer premium services over a broadband network is accelerating investments in CEM. CSPs are investing billions of dollars in capital to provide convergent mobile and fixed broadband services to consumers and businesses but this has not led to improvements in customer loyalty, which is reflected in price concessions and churn in mature segments of their business. Despite the incumbent status held by most tier-1 and tier-2 CSPs that serve millions of broadband and mobile subscribers, CSPs have acknowledged that their ability to assess customer satisfaction is limited. In many cases subscriber information is scattered throughout different parts of the organization making it difficult to gain a unified view of the customer. At the same time the convergence of services brings with it technology and operational challenges. Instead of a single domain to manage, now CSPs are faced with managing a tenfold increase in network and information technology (IT) domains.
CEM has many facets because to effectively manage the customer experience, different types of interactions between the customer and the CSP will occur over the lifecycle of the customer. The areas that CSPs are actively investing in CEM include call center customer care, which entails threading together incidents to avoid churn, order to activation of new services, self service channels, service and network performance in real time, application transaction monitoring, mobile device management, more precise marketing of new services, and personalization.
In my next blog I will talk about several scenarios where CSPs are actively making investments.
CEM is the ability to manage each interaction between the subscriber and the CSP in the order, fulfillment, billing, customer care, and assurance of services consumed. CEM is a strategic approach taken by the CSP to augment business processes and integrate a myriad of data sets and software systems to positively impact the subscribers’ experience. In order for a business to assess the customer experience, each interaction must be managed across each part of the business where the customer evaluates, orders, uses, and makes payment for the product or service.
The market forces increasing the awareness of customer experience are in part being driven by the commoditization of telecoms services – primarily voice and the threat posed by new participants in the telecommunications economy that offer premium services over a broadband network. The threat posed by new participants in the economy that offer premium services over a broadband network is accelerating investments in CEM. CSPs are investing billions of dollars in capital to provide convergent mobile and fixed broadband services to consumers and businesses but this has not led to improvements in customer loyalty, which is reflected in price concessions and churn in mature segments of their business. Despite the incumbent status held by most tier-1 and tier-2 CSPs that serve millions of broadband and mobile subscribers, CSPs have acknowledged that their ability to assess customer satisfaction is limited. In many cases subscriber information is scattered throughout different parts of the organization making it difficult to gain a unified view of the customer. At the same time the convergence of services brings with it technology and operational challenges. Instead of a single domain to manage, now CSPs are faced with managing a tenfold increase in network and information technology (IT) domains.
CEM has many facets because to effectively manage the customer experience, different types of interactions between the customer and the CSP will occur over the lifecycle of the customer. The areas that CSPs are actively investing in CEM include call center customer care, which entails threading together incidents to avoid churn, order to activation of new services, self service channels, service and network performance in real time, application transaction monitoring, mobile device management, more precise marketing of new services, and personalization.
In my next blog I will talk about several scenarios where CSPs are actively making investments.
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