The Current State of the CEM Market

Procera

The now-private DPI, PCRF, and overall data analytics company expanded its CEM portfolio a few years ago with a product called “Service Plan Assurance,” which provided end-users with score cards—both time-series and real-time—that showed them actual metrics on the performance of their network connection. We really like this idea, as subscribers are notoriously suspicious that their provider is putting forth minimum effort, so the ability to not only collect usage metrics, but also share them with the subscriber, demonstrates a tremendous amount of respect for the intelligence of your subscribers. I, for one, would certainly welcome this from my CSP.

Astellia

A part of Astellia’s Nova monitoring tool, Nova Customer Analytics is all about deep insight on high-value customers’ QoE, and features cool map overlays and a variety of other useful visual metrics. In addition, they’ve built in a Service Level Agreement (SLA) Management tool, which helps avoid SLA breaches.

Nokia

Nokia’s CEM focus seems to be all about ease of use, both for end users and CSPs. Nokia earned our 2015 Pipeline Innovation Award for CEM for its Customer Experience Index, which nicely compiles NPS and other KPIs into an easy-to-swallow package that helps CSPs know where to focus their efforts. They tout that their CEM On Demand solution has helped an unnamed European operator drop its churn rate from 10% to 1% in just three months, and claims a Latin American operator retained that might have otherwise churned by using targeted campaigns, and along the way the CSP netted $2 million (USD) in revenue that would have otherwise been lost.

IBM

It's been a couple of years since Big Blue acquired Ireland-based analytics firm, The Now Factory and has retained that brand as the main thrust of its CEM offerings. It’s a slick solution that offers a great deal of end-user visibility and the ability to identify problems, find root causes, and find a way to resolve them (hopefully before the subscribers even notice). IBM says that CSPs using the solution have saved incredible amounts of time and money, and have reduced complexity through the single tool.

Comarch

Comarch’s approach to CEM is all about prioritizing the resolution of the inevitable issues that will arise on the network and elsewhere in the customer experience. The tools let you analyze the potential impact of network problems on your subscribers, allowing you to, in turn, prioritize the resolution of those issues to avoid negative consequences for as many users as possible (or your highest-value customers).

NICE

Customer experience is a huge part of what NICE does, and their solutions include not only customer metrics and customized offer capability, but also elements like employee engagement tools designed to ensure that every team member is on board and engaged with a common customer focus. Clients include BT Business, eBay Enterprise and American Airlines, and as we reported in a previous article on CSP CEM strategies, the firm has some significant results to show. “The BT Faults and Repair scores over the course of several months reveal significant improvements,” said BT Business’s Steph Cole of their work with NICE, “with NPI improving by an impressive 38 points and agent satisfaction by 23%, with numbers continuing to rise.”

Adobe

I’ll admit that Adobe isn’t the first company to leap to mind when I’m thinking about telecom customer experience… but that’s my fault, not theirs. They are featured in Gartner’s Digital Experience Management Golden Quadrant and boast a customer list that includes Verizon Wireless, Swisscom, and Vodafone. Their analytics solutions are robust, and their massive design cred decidedly informs their Experience Manager solution.