By: Scott St. John - Pipeline
Technology and service providers alike have been talking about customer experience management (CEM) for quite some time, and today just about anyone who does anything related to communications
technology seems to have jumped on the bandwagon. However, very few technology solutions actually interact with customers or directly impact their experience. There isn’t any doubt that the
customer experience is one of the most important, if not the most important, differentiators in today’s communications and entertainment (COMET) marketplace, but what exactly is it? Know thy own In
order to understand the customer experience, a service provider must first understand the customer: who they are, what they’re experiencing and when and why they’re experiencing it…
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By: Jesse Cryderman
Pop quiz: What is the most commonly used acronym in telecommunications these days? Although I secretly wish it were POTS, short for “plain old telephone service,†the answer is CEM, or customer
experience management. The level of attention and investment that communications service providers (CSPs) and their vendors are giving to CEM is staggering: in survey after survey it’s become clear
that the buzz surrounding CEM is much more than lip service, so much so that Oracle has designated the present day as the “customer experience era…
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By: Jesse Cryderman
“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.†—Benjamin Franklin The best time to address a problem is before it surfaces. Granted, this requires some foresight and visibility, but
identifying areas of concern and confronting them ahead of time is a hallmark of progress. After all, if a car is to function without fail and last its full life cycle, preventative maintenance is
necessary. And if you want to avoid infectious diseases, immunizations are imperative. So why would customer care be any different? However they’re measured, the costs associated with failing to
address preventable problems are significant…
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By: Jesse Cryderman, Scott St. John -
Pipeline
The weather outside was frightful, but the venue was so delightful. What the Fira Gran Via, the new home to Mobile World Congress (MWC), lacked in aesthetics, it made up for in size,
accessibility and protection from the elements. Some attendees missed the palatial grounds of the old Fira, but most exhibitors were happy with the substantial increase in size, and the bottom line
is the show delivered: attendance hit a record 72,000, according to the GSMA. Mobile World Capital signed a five-year deal to keep the show in Barcelona, and the new space offers plenty of room to
grow the event…
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By: Srinivas Padmanabharao
What would a billion dollars in additional annual revenue mean for your company? More importantly, how can any company secure that kind of money? More advertising? Higher prices for services?
Discounts to entice customers to buy more? Ready for the answer? It involves enhancing the end-to-end customer experience, from the initial customer engagement to delivery and ongoing usage of new
products and services. Forrester Research discovered that if a wireless service provider improves customer experience, it stands to gain as much as $1…
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By: Jesse Cryderman
The theme song of the long-running sitcom Cheers had a prescient hook that should be absorbed by everyone working in telecom today: “You wanna be where everybody knows your name.†Customers
want to feel special. They want services that meet their specific needs, bills they can understand and personalized customer care. When you envision your customers, do you see them as unique users
or simply members of a segment? Similarly, when they look in the mirror, do you think they see themselves as generic buckets or as noteworthy individuals? And, last but not least, are your call
centers capable of putting the “custom†in customer support? These questions are at the heart of a transformation in perspective that is essential to potent customer experience management
(CEM)…
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By: Alex Hoffman
Customer experience management is posing unique challenges as mobile and fixed-line communications service providers (CSPs), as well as corporate networks, aggressively migrate to an all-IP
infrastructure. IP (internet protocol) networks efficiently deliver converged voice, video and data services and applications, and they operate more cost-effectively. In the hopes of enhancing
their profitability by generating incremental revenue and reducing subscriber turnover, CSPs are seeking to administer next-generation services using IMS (IP multimedia subsystem) and LTE
(long-term evolution) service-delivery infrastructure to enhance their profitability by generating incremental revenue and by reducing subscriber turnover…
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By: Rick Corker
During my recent travels I happened to see a towering billboard for a major US communications service provider (CSP) that shouts, “Fewest dropped calls!†Without a hint of irony my driving
companion said, “What if airlines advertised ‘Fewest plane crashes!’ Bet it would really draw in the customers, wouldn’t it?†That telling remark speaks volumes about the sad state of the customer
experience among CSPs today. According to the 2011 Customer Acquisition & Retention Study commissioned by Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN), for which it surveyed almost 15,000 mobile users across
17 nations, customer dissatisfaction is on the rise globally: nearly half of those surveyed were heavy users, and a third of them were likely to churn in the coming year…
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By: Ran Achituv
Pretty much everyone in the communications industry understands that customer experience (CX) is becoming the key competitive differentiator. The best way to actually manage and improve CX,
however, is less obvious. Some service providers chase the latest technology with bells and whistles, while others focus on improving one or two aspects that they consider to be most
important. Neither approach will work, of course. Managing the customer experience requires something more holistic, since there is no single customer experience management (CEM) solution or
technology capable of optimizing CX by itself; a quick fix of a single area or domain is also doomed to failure…
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By: Becky Bracken
Implementing Big Data for communications service providers (CSPs) can be like taking a drink of water from a fire hose. A tiny sip is all you really need, but the trick lies in taking that sip
without drowning — or taking your head off — in the process. Customer experience management (CEM) can be similarly daunting. The TM Forum defines customer experience as “the result of the sum
of observations, perceptions, thoughts and feelings arising from interactions and relationships between customers and their service provider(s)…
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By: Becky Bracken
It was only a matter of time. Smartphone users who once recoiled at the idea of having their current location disclosed now flick their tiny screens and expect to be told exactly where they are
on a map, not to mention what time it is, what the weekend forecast looks like and where to get the best tapas in a particular neighborhood. Times have changed, and the appetite for location-based
services (LBS) is becoming ravenous. LBS revenues are on track to grow more than 20 percent in Europe and more than 9 percent in North America by 2017, according to Berg Insight in a February
research report…
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By: Jesse Cryderman
Pipeline’s Innovation Awards Program Following a very successful 2012 awards program, Pipeline is pleased to announce that nomination are now open for the 2013 Innovation Awards program. The
program has kicked off in high gear, and many early nominees have already thrown their hats in the ring, including AT&T, JDSU, Orga, MetraTech, Comptel, CHR, Tekelec, Tribold,
Microsoft, Acme Packet and many others. This year there are more categories and more ways to win, and the exclusive awards ceremony on May 13 in Nice, France, promises to be a night to
remember…
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By: Tim Young - do not use (default)
“It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages.†—Henry Ford Henry Ford was a lot of things, but first and foremost he was a
man who understood who buttered his bread. The innovative steps he took, from new assembly-line methods to the then-unheard-of $5-a-day wage the Ford Motor Company paid its employees in 1914, were
implemented in the name of building a high-quality product for the sake of creating happy customers. It’s the essence of most any business: maximizing customer satisfaction…
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