By: Jesse Cryderman

Two months ago, I received a greeting card in the mail from my service provider. Inside the card there wasn’t an upsell offer, as I expected, but a pre-paid Visa card loaded with $10. Although the card made no mention of it, later in the month AT&T made some small changes to the way in which I consumed their service (I often viewed UVerse through my XBOX 360), and this was likely a pre-emptive gesture of good will. In fact, I told several people about the gift card, and no one about the change in service. My, how times have changed!

For years, communications service providers (CSPs) have been trounced for delivering poor customer experiences. Today, they’re in the midst of changing their ways, and it’s not just lip service. In fact, customer experience management (CEM) is the new competitive battleground, and success in this arena will likely determine which service providers remain relevant and profitable in the years to come.

CSPs are heavily investing in solutions that improve metrics like Net Promoter Score (NPS) and reduce churn rates. CEM has become so pervasive in telecom that “many CSPs are now linking executive compensation and/or bonuses to improved customer experience scores,” wrote Greg Owens, Senior Director, Customer Experience Solutions Marketing, Alcatel-Lucent, in a recent blog post.

The CEM solutions and strategies are having a tangible impact. In the Forrester Customer Experience Index 2014, experience scores from ISPs, TV service providers, and wireless carriers, which have traditionally been at the bottom of the barrel, “shot up from 2013 levels.”

In keeping with the trend, vendors are beefing up their CEM play, and many vendors are turning their traditional telecom support product lines into CEM-focused suites. In this buyers' guide to CEM, we will examine the market landscape and look at full-service suites, specialized tools, and unique solutions that can maximize the customer experience.

IBM

IBM made big news when it acquired CEM-software specialists Tealeaf in mid-2012, but Big Blue has been in the CEM game since at least 2007, when it announced Tivoli Netcool Customer Experience Management (CEM). The solution set provided instant access to data that enabled service providers to manage user accounts by customer, location, device, time, grouping and service through a single dashboard view. The CEM suite has since been re-branded as Tealeaf, and includes a wide range of products that address the unique needs of a CSP. Tealeaf cxImpact, for example, provides visibility into hidden problems that could negatively affect customer experience, while Tealeaf cxOverstat helps operators improve content placement and campaign performance. Tealeaf cxMobile addresses the mobile channel and brings Tealeaf capabilities to the new era of mobility.

IBM’s CEM solutions are endowed with the massive capabilities of the world’s deepest big data and analytics portfolio, which grew even deeper following IBM’s acquisition of the Now Factory in 2013.

In March of 2013, IBM took its CEM strategy directly to business leaders with the IBM Consumer Experience Lab, a research and development facility designed to provide C-level executives with direct access to over 100 researchers and thousands of business consultants. “We will help clients explore the possibilities presented by new assets, technologies and innovation models based on our engagement experiences with thousands of organizations across every industry,” said Mahmoud Naghshineh, vice president, Services Research at IBM.