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They’ve always been around. They’ve always been present.

They’ve been a part of the conversation, and maintaining their happiness has always been a goal, if only in theory.

“They” are the customers, and, if you listen to the chatter from CSPs and OSS/BSS vendors, alike, over the last few years, they’ve experienced a serious renaissance. Whereas keeping customers has always been a cornerstone of any successful telecom endeavor, we’ve never been so inundated with marketing pushes about keeping customers happy, thereby reducing churn and, if you’re lucky, maximizing ARPU.

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In a world where basically everything is oversold, analytics stands out. Every major technology player has a strategy – and in many cases a TV commercial or two – to tout its ability to unlock hidden insights from the torrents of data that flow through business organizations every day. It is true that data isn’t worth much without some kind of tangible analysis to make sense of it. It’s tough, however, to see many of the approaches being sold today as much more than re-branded data warehouses or worse, the latest consulting presentation. There are some promises, however, that may hold a shred of truth, and one of them seems to come from the Microsoft-Convergys partnership.

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The last month has been a tumultuous one, both in the world of OSS/BSS, and in the world, at large. However, market consolidation, shifting communications paradigms, and ash-spewing volcanic craters were also accompanied by some positive spending news and a few other bright spots on the ash-covered horizon.

The volcano eruption in Iceland could be the first of many salvos in the latest battle of the video conferencing wars. The eruption kept air traffic at a standstill for about a week, and resulted in some people being stranded overseas for several weeks, according to various press reports. As a result, there were increases for many of the video conferencing providers. HP Halo studios saw a 14 percent increase week over week for the weeks of Apr 5-11 to Apr 12-18 for internal users and total usage for all customers increased 38 percent during that time period.

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Service provider executives, marketing teams, and account managers are concerned with a growing number of customer-focused service quality and availability issues. Their concerns are poorly addressed with the tools traditionally used to monitor network operations, and the challenges will only grow more complex as data traffic continues to exponentially grow.

A proactive approach, however, is Customer Experience Management (CEM), which industry analyst firm Stratecast, a division of Frost & Sullivan, says is gaining favor as service providers increase their understanding of the relationship between customer perception of service quality and the longer-term business requirements for customer retention and managing brand loyalty.

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Exposed to constant innovations and new service experiences on the Internet, consumers have raised their expectations when it comes to their telecom services, making a focus on the customer experience a strategic imperative for communication service providers (CSPs). Customers – consumer or enterprise - want personalization, flexibility, quality, and innovation from their CPS. They also want the freedom to choose what services to use, when and how to use them, as well as the ability to set price controls and payment methods. And if they can't get them from their CSP, there are plenty of nimble new players in the market just waiting for the chance to pounce.

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Mobile operators and wholesale network infrastructure providers are embracing Carrier Ethernet in order to future-proof for explosive data growth and 4G mobile networks while, at the same time, reducing operational expenses. Deploying an Ethernet-based backhaul network is key to achieving the business objective of cost containment—driving down “per-bit” costs for transporting increasing data traffic. But to realize this objective, service operations teams must overcome four key challenges:

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The mobile consumer has finally won. In almost every country, mobile subscribers are flocking to the new generation of rich-content mobile data-based services such as Flickr, Twitter, real-time gaming and location-aware applications that are -truly- making a difference in everyday life. To launch these services, however, operators are being forced to massively upgrade their networks to all-over-IP architectures in order to provision and mange them. Unfortunately, this migration to all-IP has presented huge problems for operators, as the monitoring and troubleshooting competencies, equipment requirements, and most importantly, linkages between the Network Operations Center (NOC) and Customer Care (CC) have changed dramatically.

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Think back to the last time you went in to make a purchase at your local consumer electronics store. The limited range of products in the store may have made it a frustrating experience, or you may have been overwhelmed by the options available but unable to get any assistance from an overextended or untrained sales staff. If you visited a big box store during a peak shopping time, such as the holiday season or over the weekend, you may have been turned away by crowded aisles and long lines, or you may have showed up to find that the store had gone out of business, as many have over the last several months.

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“It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages.”

They’ve always been there. They’ve always been important. They contribute the revenue. They consume the service. Without them, we’d all be unemployed.