Telcos have jumped on the customer experience bandwagon big time. Their traditional services have been commoditized and subscriber growth and revenue have stalled, so they can no longer get away with poor service. The focus now is on retention and upselling.
Quality of experience is the key factor in customer satisfaction and loyalty, says Erwann Thomassain, head of Amdocs' customer management division in APAC.
"Customer satisfaction correlates with a willingness to purchase more if CSPs provide a simple and consistent experience across channels, and leverage customer context to deliver relevant and timely offers."
A great customer experience can lead to higher ARPU, lower churn and lower opex, says Chris Marshall, Tektronix Communications' director of business development for Asia Pacific. But consistently delivering a good customer experience across multiple technologies and services is a major challenge for most telcos.
Marshall says the foundations of success are the ability to track and monitor actual customer experiences in real time and, when something goes wrong, being able to diagnose down through the network in near real time.
The key is real time. Real-time analysis of course allows telcos to personalize the customer experience. Working in real-time is important in service quality monitoring, traffic steering, customer care and location-based marketing.
Amdocs' Thomassain says real-time analysis and reporting are required to differentiate and gain market share, as well as give management an accurate picture of the business performance at any given point in time.
He argues that CSPs need to identify "key moments of truth" in the customer lifecycle to create better offers, be right the first time, sell across multi-channels and blend care interactions with commerce (i.e. resolve care issues with the right offer).