Comptel User Group Survey Identifies Customer Experience Management as Significant Opportunity for Operators

A poll conducted by Comptel Corporation (NASDAQ OMX Helsinki: CTL1V), the leading vendor of dynamic Operations Support System (OSS) software, at the annual Comptel User Group (CUG) revealed that nine out of ten telecommunications industry executives see customer experience as one of the major factors contributing to operators’ survival and success.

The survey findings mirror those of previous research commissioned by Comptel and further identify customer experience management as a significant potential revenue opportunity for communications service providers (CSPs). Earlier this year, the majority of consumers said that they are indeed ready and willing to pay more for a better customer experience.

More than half (55%) of the nearly 100 participants in the interactive session, moderated by Comptel and partners Cisco and Alcatel-Lucent, indicated that network performance in terms of speed and reliability has the greatest influence on the customer experience. Despite this, there was agreement about the difficulty in determining what will satisfy each individual customer (whether consumer or enterprise), be it accurate billing, flexible pricing options, diverse service portfolios or high-quality content.

Moreover, about two-thirds of CSPs noted that they are not fully utilising their network and other data to improve the customer experience. Yet, almost 100% of survey respondents recognised that leveraging this information and their OSS is important to get a holistic view of subscriber behaviour, and thus better manage the customer experience and generate new revenue streams.

The poll findings confirmed Comptel’s vision of a real-time, interactive and personalised OSS platform that can provide superior insight into customers and improve their experience, which was unveiled at the CUG to customers, partners and industry analysts.

Other Key Findings

• The majority of respondents believed that CSPs, when compared to over-the-top (OTT) players, device manufacturers and operating system companies, provide the best customer experience. However, OTT players were seen to have had a head start in providing good customer experience for cloud services.
• In the next 18-24 months, 51% of respondents said that they are planning to enhance the customer experience by responding to customers’ needs in real time and interacting with them more, as well as getting more complete pictures of their customers’ behaviours and anticipating their needs and frustrations.
• With the clear shift toward utilising data more frequently to improve the customer experience, more than 70% indicated they are using network and other data for offline business intelligence analysis and online reporting. Operators are using this data mainly for customer profiling for targeted marketing campaigns.
• Mostly all respondents (88%) agreed that automated fulfilment in OSS/BSS is very important, especially for improving time-to-market for services, reducing cost of deployment and providing a better customer experience.

Supporting Quotes

• "Customers expect a personalised, interactive experience, and to provide this, it’s imperative to leverage their OSS and data. CSPs must detect each event, analyse it and take action—all in real time,” said Mr. Simo Saaskilahti, senior vice president, corporate development, Comptel. "Comptel’s dynamic OSS solutions can help CSPs every step of the way, with meaningful data analysis, improved customer experience at critical points of interaction, anticipating and pre-empting churn and maximising customer retention and revenue.”
• "What is most striking today is the speed with which customers react through social media. If a customer has a bad experience—whether from a misaligned billing notification or a less-than-expected resolution to a service or device problem—there can be a movement of thousands of others demanding a more equitable solution in just a few hours,” said Karl Whitelock, director, OSS/BSS business strategy, Stratecast, a division of Frost & Sullivan. "Ignoring insight about the customers can have unfavourable consequences more so now than ever before. Understanding the customer experience is essential for operators’ long-term business success.”

Resources

• For more information about Comptel, visit www.comptel.com.
• Contact comptel.marketing@comptel.com to obtain a full report of the Comptel User Group survey findings.
• Connect with Comptel on its blog, The Dynamics of OSS, and on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. Also visit the company’s YouTube channel.

Tags

Comptel, Comptel User Group, OSS, Cisco, Alcatel-Lucent, customer experience, data, OTT, fulfillment, Stratecast

About Comptel Corporation

Comptel Dynamic OSS solutions enable telecom service providers to deliver services flexibly and charge them effectively. Comptel's wide expertise in service fulfilment, policy control, mediation and charging empowers our customers to focus on delivering innovative services. Comptel has provided software solutions to over 280 service providers with over one billion subscribers in 85 countries. The Group has about 600 employees worldwide, and net sales were EUR 78 million in 2010. www.comptel.com