IBM Analytics expert discusses how proactive analytics improve cost, revenue and customer satisfaction
It used to be enough for telecom operators to monitor and manage network quality. Now, as the wireless operator space continuously hits new heights of competitiveness and customer churn can make or break a quarterly financial report, customer experience management has taken center stage.
Fortunately, the telecom industry, perhaps more so than any other, has access to one of the largest and most complicated pools of customer data imaginable. The trick is analyzing that data in a real time manner that produces the actionable insight needed to ensure the end user can watch the latest viral YouTube clip without frame jitter or excessive buffering.
Creating and implementing customer experience management strategies supported by data analytics is a challenge for operators further dealing with executing long-term network virtualization and cloud services programs.
Gaurav Deshpande, Sr. Program Director, Analytics Industry Marketing, Communications Sector at IBM, framed the issue using the foundation of hybrid on premise/off-premise cloud services, an NFV-based virtual network, virtualized network functions and management, and an NFV orchestration tool on top of legacy infrastructure supporting 2G, 3G, SMS and other services.
“You can see how the complexity adds up very quickly,” he said. “On top of the service management layer we have the actual customer experience. This is where the majority of telecommunications companies…are failing right now. We have very good tools to manage infrastructure and even service quality management for individual network components. But we just don’t have the ability to coordinate what’s happening at the network layer and the quality of service layer with what is the actual quality of experience being delivered to the individual subscriber.”
That’s the problem, and the solution is unified data analytics. Deshpande covered what IBM Now Factory Customer and Network Analytics can offer telcos.
“We help you save revenue and we help you reduce cost by improving customer retention. We finally know which network issues are impacting your most important, most loyal, most profitable customers, and you can take appropriate actions. We take it a step further with proactive network analytics and proactive care. We can forecast which network issues are likely to escalate. The care team can predict which subscribers are likely to churn and take proactive customer care actions to prevent that churn. The network capacity team finally knows where to invest the constrained funds for infrastructure improvement.”
To underscore the importance of dynamic customer experience management, consider IBM Analytics research that shows network service quality as the highest ranked driver of customer loyalty, even outweighing price, device type and in-store experience. On the carrier side, AT&T’s Domain 2.0 movement from hardware to software is evidence of the value major mobile network operators place on network virtualization and harnessing the power of data.
In addition to combating churn, maximizing existing revenue, lowering opex and optimizing capex, Deshpande explained how customer experience management can create new income streams. “Understanding subscriber experience drives new revenue. As you understand your customers better, you can run really effective internal campaigns for selling them new services. You can also monetize the customer data to drive mobile offers from restaurants, from shops and other businesses. When you start learning from this over a period of time and start implementing policies…you constantly improve your business model to improve cost, to improve revenue and to improve customer satisfaction.”
For more in-depth discussion of the importance of customer experience solutions, using predictive analytics to drive engagement and boosting sales and retention through process automation, check out this video webinar featuring Deshpande and Heavy Reading analyst Sandra O’Boyle, as well as the accompanying white paper Proactively Managing Customer Experience with Real-Time Analytics.
