| Creating loyalty through end-to-end Service Quality and Partner Management
Competitive differentiation for advanced and converged services will rely on more than traditional service performance targets. “Roll-ups” of metrics related to networks, applications, and IT infrastructure are no longer enough for matching service quality to customer expectations. To truly “manage” the customer experience, service providers have to build end-to-end views of not only the customer and services consumed, but also of the preferences, behaviors, personas and social network affiliations that define the customer.
By understanding what defines their customers, service providers have a better chance of meeting not only present-day expectations, but also future expectations in a proactive manner. With an emphasis on management of the pre-custom, pre-service aspects of the customer/provider relationship, service providers can work toward building “loyalty” among their customers. Loyalty comes from understanding the customer experience from before first contact with the service provider, all the way through to the point where a customer either recommends the service to another person, or does not recommend the service.
Simultaneous to building an understanding of that complete lifecycle, service providers must also grasp their growing value chains, which tend to muddle visibility into processes, people and operations supporting new-generation services. To assure services and to better manage customer perceptions, service providers have to monitor complicated SLAs, cooperative partnerships, revenue settlements/rebates and different types of conflict resolutions.
To address both the end-to-end view of the customer lifecycle and of the value chain, TM Forum’s Managing the Customer Experience Program takes a phased approach to: - Developing a single framework for measuring and effectively managing service quality;
- Defining key service quality metrics at each point along the service delivery network;
- Identifying service quality issues and the necessary accounting and rebating information; usage information, and problem resolution information;
- Defining management capabilities to support each step in the service delivery network;
- Specifying appropriate interfaces/API’s to enable the interchange of such information electronically between the various providers in a service value network.
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| Business Benefits | | Accurately define customer experience | Define metrics needed for improving customer satisfaction | | Provide a resource /service model based on eTOM/ITIL principles | Modeling of operational processes to support required Customer Experience metrics | |
| Current Deliverables | | | | Managing Customer Experience (SQM) Charter for Phase 1
TR 148 Technical Report: Managing the Quality of Customer Experience - This document describes the principals and models for assuring the Quality of Customer Experience (QoCE) through end to end (e2e) Service Quality Management (SQM) that forms the basis of the e2e Holistic Customer Experience Framework Ecosystem that supports:
- B2B processes (Assurance focus);
- SLA Agreements (implicit, explicit customer defined) for services and resources;
- Linkage to customer and user perception information.
| Further Reading: - Business Benchmarking Metrics Framework v3
- Service Level Agreement handbook GB917
- Wireless Service Quality Measurements GB923
- Best practice Video of IP GB938 (draft)
| TR149 Technical Report: Holistic e2e Customer Experience Framework & Sample Workbook
Includes two parts:
Part 1: Holistic e2e Customer Experience Framework—Service Level Agreements and End-to-End Service Quality Management. Reviews five scenarios where e2e Customer experience is needed, IPTV, MobileTV, IP VPN, Service syndication, VoIP, and Blackberry. Part 2: Key Factor Analysis Workbook—Provides a Customer Experience model and analysis methodology called Key Factor Analysis. Proposes as set of APIs metrics and design principles for establishing Customer Experience and end to end Service Quality Management. TR 152 White Paper: Managing Quality of Customer Experience— Reports the key conclusions of the MCE Catalyst which are a virtualized resource// service model aligned with ITIL practice.
Phase 2 Activities Currently Underway: - Customer Care Use Cases to prioritize Metrics development and match with SP and New service operational needs.
- CE and Metrics best practice studies with Service Provider Leadership Council.
- Marketing of Customer Experience concepts and Phase 1 results.
- Harmony 5 Catalyst Project to develop MCE ecosystem Business Services (NGOSS contracts).
- Probes strategy
- Metrics inventory Coordination across TM Forum Team especially benchmarking and SLA Management.
- MCE application ecosystem design principles applied to TM Forum Interfaces and Application Framework (TAM).
- Coordination With Revenue Management and Value Chain Initiative.
Phase 3 Scope (future plans) Define value chain processes and extending the service coverage. |
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