By Chun-Ling Woon

The telecommunications industry’s emphasis on customer experience derives from two sources. First, it is viewed by many as a necessary re-focusing of service assurance onto the customer: failures in the network are relevant to the extent that they impact customers, and a view through this lens places a CSP’s priorities in the right place.  

Second, the term “customer experience” derives from usage outside of telecom, where it means a broad focus for any company, in any industry, on every customer touchpoint. 

Within telecom to date, the first definition has received the greatest emphasis.  Partly as a result, and partly because of the sheer complexity of the problem, “front end” CEM suffers at many CSPs.  Customers receive inconsistent product offers, prices, discounts, and bundles depending on whether they access a CSP through a retail outlet, call center, or web site.   This inconsistent experience, forming the first impression for many customers, is difficult to overcome.

As described by Gartner research director Martina Kurth, part of the solution to inconsistent offerings through multiple sales channels, and duplicate products and services in their respective catalogs, is for carriers to create end-to-end product and service catalogs that provide a single point of creation for new products and services.  This approach also overcomes duplication, which is due to of lack of visibility to the product set.   Says Kurth, “…the awareness among carriers for the end-to-end product and service catalog issue is high. It is a vital pain point for many carriers which requires urgent resolution.”  (The Gartner: Competitive Landscape: Product and Service Catalog Management Solutions, Worldwide.  ID # G00168885, July 2009).

In this article, we describe how this can be accomplished.  By deploying product

It can also provide a platform from which carriers can manage costs as well as revenues for a full picture of the profitability of products, services, and special offers.  This approach also allows a service provider to automate much of the service creation process.    Most importantly, the approach described here accelerates time-to-revenue while simultaneously controlling costs in a multiservice environment. 

Challenges

Sales channel issues impact CSP product managers and marketing departments as well. Many CSPs are unable to obtain a clear view of existing products, and so are prone to create duplicates, further exacerbating already dauntingly large product catalogs and offer complexity.