Livewire

One of the challenges in a rapidly changing, converging telco and media landscape is how do we understand, interpret and measure value from a consumer's perspective.  With new service offerings and technology capability emerging, synthesizing and shifting constantly, how can we evaluate the value proposition of each or compare the value of one operators triple-play offering over another?

Just because something is new, or sexy, doesn't make it a killer app or the "next big thing".  A company needs a way of assessing the value of their communication services offerings and opportunities for innovation without resulting in costly duplication.

Value of the consumer communication experience can be defined in reference to the following three aspects;

• Presence - is the combination of the current user identity/role, their location, the time and their level of mobility;
• Experience - defines the consumer experience in leveraging communications including the service(s), application(s), device(s) and quality of service provided; and
• Content - is the value contributed from a consumer's capacity to find, generate and consume relevant content.

A consumer in assessing a providers value will look at each of these aspects and ask themselves relevant questions;

• Does my provider give me service anywhere I am likely to be - home, office, overseas, rural communities?
• Can I get my favorite tv/sport/stock information anywhere and anytime?
• Does the quality of service justify expensive convergence devices/services?
• Etc.

Often the answers to these questions present a fractured picture.  A consumer can access some of the content, some of the time and sometimes its easy.  Much like providers themselves the industry is still very siloed in the value they provide - cable operators have better sport, telco carriers provide better quality of service for telephony, media operators have stronger content ecosystems.  Customers are refusing the triple/quad-play path simply because the value to the consumer is not provided.

How can operators/providers improve the consumer value of their offerings.  Consider each of the aspects of consumer value - Presence, Experience and Content - as circles whose size is determined by maturity and breadth;

• For service offerings where all three intersect, this is an integrated offering which can be leveraged (e.g voice telephony for carriers) to provide improved service;
• For service offerings where only two of the three aspects are mature/broad (e.g internet providers with broad content ecosystems) this is an opportunity to enhance the offering to be an integrated capability (i.e by broadening coverage of the presence aspect); and
• For offerings with only one aspect (i.e a content generator only) this is a gap which must be addressed through development of a new service line or partnering to deliver higher value to the customer.

This framework for understanding consumer value is a start for operators and providers to consistently evaluate their value proposition and asses the impact of market strategy on that  value proposition.  The broader and more mature your services are in these aspects, the more concrete and compelling is the value to each consumer.

Having conceptualized and assessed the consumer value proposition, the next challenge comes in developing a platform which enables a competitive value chain to optimize cost, provide personalized/differentiated offers and support the rapid innovation demanded by today's customers.

But that's a subject for another day, another blog.

Posted by Ilya Joel Pitcher at 03:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I was at the NXTComm conference (the US telco show) in Chicago last week - and the air of bullishness in the industry was inescapable. Starting with AT&T's Randall Stephenson's optimism-filled keynote driving mobility, to Verizon's celebration of customer delight, it appears the telcos are making all the right moves. Any cable operator executive at the show would have clearly felt intimidated with the strides that telcos seem to be making into video world. IPTV was everywhere on the exhibit floor - service providers, end-user device makers, enabling platforms, middleware and turnkey solution providers.

If anything struck me as odd, it was the rather weak voice that content providers had at the show. I would have thought that the telcos would be seriously courting the studios with some public displays of affection - but instead, I saw them touting more person-to-person communications (e.g. AT&T's videoshare) and personal convenience capabilities (e.g. Microsoft's 3-screen Telco 2.0 concept). In a world of converging quadruple-play, I guess differentiation beyond channel line-ups is important to highlight.

Another interesting observation at the IPTV displays was the way everyone was marketing their product using the ensemble. As a lay consumer, and based purely on what I saw at the show, I would have equated Motorola, Microsoft and AT&T as independent providers of an integrated experience ... though each came from a different perspective of how they understand me as an end-customer. The extent of collaboration required to deliver an out-of-the-world customer experience is amazing - perhaps why Cisco's John Chambers picked collaboration as the topic of his keynote. But, making collaborative structures work within the organization is one thing, making them work across organizations poses a new and interesting challenge for the largely monolithic aggregators. The iPhone release due this week will be a true stress test of such a partnership.

And I wont be surprised to see Google and Apple making a splash of their own at next years telco conference.

 

 

 

 

Posted by Deepak Padaki at 07:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

CSPs are at the brink of a transformation – a transformation from being the ones that have been providing the strong plumbing to the ones that leverage the plumbing to change the customer experience. This is a transformation that has been necessitated by a lot of things happening simultaneously:

1. Convergence – Voice, Data, Video and Mobile coming together and calling for the quad play offering

2. Evolution of standards like Web 2.0 that have changed the way the internet is viewed

3. The change in hand sets in form and feature increasing the possibilities of what the handset can be used for

4. Lifestyle changes accompanied by change in the demographic of users of communication services

Of all these the last one – Lifestyle changes and the expectations coming out of it is the most compelling reason for the CSPs to take this transformation seriously. Users are no longer looking only for the dial tone when they think of a service provider. Instead the expectation now is that they will be able to seamlessly connect, communicate and exchange multi-media content anytime anywhere with anybody from location aware devices.

Various businesses are rushing to full fill this need. While the traditional service providers are investing heavily in increasing the bandwidth that can reach the homes, the cable providers are offering telephony for free on cable, content providers and device manufacturers are staking a claim to be the first port of call for the customers. Meeting the customer expectation and providing a rich user experience needs the infrastructure that the service providers are building. However unless the service providers transform themselves into being the ones that provide the customer experience they will be relegated to being the infrastructure providers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted by Tan Moorthy at 08:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

With all the talk on transformation I was curious to know more about it. I approached Srikantan Moorthy famously known as Tan Moorthy requesting him to share his thoughts on how CSPs are transforming. Tan agreed to this with his knowledgeable smile. And here we have him sharing his views on transformation.

Srikantan (Tan) Moorthy is Vice President and Head - Delivery of the Communication Service Providers (CSP) business unit at Infosys Technologies. He has over 22 years of global experience in the IT industry, of which 12 were spent in the US. His experience ranges from systems and applications programming on a variety of computing platforms to client partnering, operations management business development, and strategy definition. Tan is a prolific contributor to organization-wide competency development and Malcolm Baldrige-based excellence initiatives.

Tan also presented his thoughts on how CSPs need to transform to CEPs (customer experience providers) in the recently concluded QuEST Forum at Rome.

Posted by Syeda Meher Taj at 05:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The launch of Microsoft Surface technology is a fundamental shift in the nature of technology devices.  Gone are the chunky, mechanical input mechanisms which have enabled human-ICT interaction across 1-foot (tiny screens and tiny keypads), 3-foot (mice and keyboards) and 10-foot (a plethora of “remote” controls”).

In its place is a tactile, direct interaction between humans and machine where touch, gestures and context – all the elements of body language – are used to interpret intention and meaning.  Instead of humans learning how to use computers, computers learn to respond to humans.  This will be a transformational shift in applications and “usability” design.  What does “usability” even mean anymore?

However, the biggest, most significant shift will be the addition of a new dimension to device interaction – how many people are using the device.  At an obvious level, each level supports up to 6 simultaneous users to share, collaborate and play (note : this is great for families).  Today the “lean-forward” devices (handsets and PC) are essentially single user and the “lean-back” device only enables multi-users to consume content passively.  The introduction of surface technology enables the active, “lean-forward” models of application use and content creation to involve families, teams, friends and even strangers at a bar to share in the experience.

Finally, the potential of this device is amplified when we consider multiple-networked devices crossing geographic, corporate and social boundaries.  Imagine when a team in Australia, a team in India and a team in China can collaborate on a design, using their own body language and familiar gestures, text presented in their own language and everyone empowered to collaborate in a way previously unimagined.  Somewhat appropriately it is a flat “Surface” driving an even flatter world.

Posted by Ilya Joel Pitcher at 12:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Let me introduce Ilya Joel-Pitcher who will be sharing his thoughts how machines are getting a lot more intelligent and customer sensitive.

Ilya Joel-Pitcher is a Senior IT Architect at Infosys with 10 years industry experience, holding key positions in both delivery and architecture consulting services. Ilya consults to large organisations - aligning business-drivers with strategic IT investment - while managing the complexity which arises in modern enterprise solutions.

Ilya has worked for a number of innovative companies delivering Online solutions, and has 6 years experience in the Telco industry. He has previously been lead architect for a Telco enterprise CRM solution and now works as a member of the Infosys Telecoms, Media and Entertainment Solutions Group.

Ilya is recognised as a thought-leader and innovator within Infosys’ Global Communication Service Provider practice, and provides architecture consultancy services in the formulation of Online strategies for tier one Telco service providers. He is a subject-matter expert in the adoption of TeleManagement Forum’s NGOSS and in increasing enterprise agility through service-orientation and improved delivery practices.

Ilya is also a contributor to IT Toolbox blog.

Posted by Syeda Meher Taj at 12:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Knowledge management has for long been on the business and IT agenda of most CSPs. Yet, in the pursuit of  converged customer service operations, the evidence point to the emerging area of knowledge integration which can significantly enhance an organization's ability to accomplish operational transformation.

In the current environment, customer service information resides in multiple product silos, groups and organizations making it difficult if not impossible to understand and manage the customer experience. The integration of this information relies on a combination of highly knowledgeable specialist individuals and loose SLAs between various customer service groups.

While this approach has been sufficient in the past, the increasing rapidity of new product and service launches, and the demands of converged operations are outpacing this person-dependent knowledge integration. A new kind of knowledge model which acts as the customer service blueprint for each new (or existing) service is required. This new knowledge integration model will integrate disparate operational silos of information and create an organizing force that can form the basis for converged operations.

Knowledge management was about archiving the best practices of the past.

Knowledge integration is about architecting the operations of the future.

At many CSPs, information available at the customer, network and application layers is not easily shared across organizational boundaries, if it is shared at all. Knowledge integration can be the critical force in transforming a customer service organization into an agile and responsive one that can deal with the complexities of new IP-based services.

An example in the context of IPTV service: Mr. Brown has IPTV service at home and frequently uses features such as digital video recording, caller ID and interactive content. He notices that the caller ID feature of the IPTV service is not displaying the caller’s phone number and reports the problem to his service provider. Customer service operations in the current model typically carry out a modest diagnostic check and pass the fault to the second/third line for further investigation. The second line must have deep insight into the complex caller ID function on IPTV to diagnose, localize and resolve the fault correctly. And as the complexity of the service increases, the second line must liaise with numerous departments to coordinate the resolution process. This process has many handoffs and delays the overall repair cycle time.

Who owns Mr. Brown's service experience? Is it the network access team? The IPTV second line support team? Or the telephony / advanced features support group? When one takes the challenges posed by convergence to their next logical step, it is clear to see that a different, customer-centric approach is the only one that makes sense for the CSP deploying triple- and quad-play services. The right knowledge at the right time, in the hands of the front-line customer support personnel (and the knowledge model) and pro-active teams, together with management incentives that foster customer advocacy rather than "pass-the-buck" service will actually deliver lower operational cost AND an improved customer experience.

With knowledge integration, CSP service operations teams will spend less time on inter-group handoffs, re-tracing steps in diagnosing problems, and increasing the likelihood of solving problems when they first appear - and in some cases even before they are reported by the customer.

Posted by Deepak Swamy at 03:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Customer experience leadership is the next battlefield for communications service providers (CSP) considering converged services. To be successful, organizations must integrate knowledge scattered among disparate functional and operational units and deliver best-in-class customer support for converged IP-based services. CSPs must also introduce proactive and predictive capabilities for customer experience differentiation.

Improving customer experience is now a board-level agenda for many communications service providers (CSP). Information management plays a key part in managing end-customer experience for CSPs. The importance of information management is being felt with the increased amount of information required to deliver best-in-class customer support for complex IP-based products. The current operational model may not be sufficient to manage new IP-based services and may result in inflated costs and an ordinary customer experience. This is counter-productive to the initial objectives of improved customer experience, sustained profitability and increased differentiation that CSPs had set while rolling out these products.

Often, service providers consider IT tools to be the solution to the service assurance challenges posed by the IP based world. In my view, IT plays an auxiliary role in improving customer experience; the real shift lies in successful transformation across the entire value chain of the customer service organization that puts knowledge integration at the heart of its future operations.

While the current operational model is sufficient for traditional services, it may be inadequate to manage customer service organizations for converged services. Converged services require operational units that can handle complexities arising out of inter-working among diverse networks, applications, and multiple access domains. Currently, operational units are often separated by product silos, and thus, may not be able to efficiently manage operations of converged services. Further, there may be non-adjacency among functional areas such as Customer Management, Service Management and Network Operations, resulting in gaps in knowledge integration. As a result, many of today’s customer services organizations have become messengers of faults, adding unwanted delay to the resolution cycle time, while second/third line organizations with high cost resources add inordinate expense.

In my next post, I will talk more about the importance of knowledge integration initiatives that CSPs should adopt, on top of any knowledge management processes they have in place today.

 

Posted by Deepak Swamy at 03:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Deepak Swamy is Associate Vice President at Infosys Technologies, and is responsible for strategic leadership of Infosys’ business solutions for communication services providers. He is an acknowledged industry expert on the converging communications market, leads strategic consulting engagements, and is a regular speaker at industry conferences on “quadruple-play” and IMS strategies for cable MSOs and wireline and wireless CSPs.

I invited Deepak to note his experiences and thoughts on how CSPs can become leaders of customer experience by transforming their customer service operations. He recently co-authored a paper with colleagues Ankur Bhan and Mandeep Kwatra.

Posted by Deepak Padaki at 03:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)