irr customer experience in a digital world final
TRANSCRIPT
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IN A DIGITAL WORLD
September 2015 | www.tmforum.org
Sponsored by
I N S I G H T S R E S E A R C H
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCEAND ANALYTICS
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2015. The entire contents of this publication are protected by copyright. All rights reserved. The Forum would like to thank the sponsors and advertisers who have enabled the publication of this
fully independently researched report. The views and opinions expressed by individual authors and contributors in this publication are provided in the writers personal capacities and are their sole
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The big picture
Section 1
Rethinking customer experience for a digital world
Section 2
Service providers speak adoption, drivers and
customers preferences
Section 3
Challenges and critical success factors
Section 4
Analyzing customer journeys is a big step towards success
Section 5
Being smart with analytics
Section 6
Make it happen: 12 strategies for CEM success and a
ready-to-go toolkit
Sponsored features
TM Forums reports and publications are free for all employees of our member organizations to download by registering on our website.
Rob RichManaging Director, Insights [email protected]
Annie [email protected]
Dawn [email protected]
Sarah Wray
Paul Davis
Mark Bradbury
Charlotte [email protected]
Nik Willetts, Deputy CEO & Chief Digital Officer, TM ForumRebecca Sendel, Senior Director, Customer Centricity Program,TM Forum
thePAGEDESIGN
TM Forum240 Headquarters PlazaEast Tower, 10th Floor
Morristown, NJ 07960-6628USAwww.tmforum.orgPhone: +1 973-944-5100Fax: +1 973-944-5110
ISBN: 978-1-939303-85-1
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Welcome to TM Forums sixth annual InsightsResearchreport on customer experience, but the first
primarily focused on the emerging digital world.
Since 2010, customer experience management
(CEM) has climbed dramatically up service providers
agendas, shifting from being regarded as a cost
of doing business (mostly driving a cost-reduction
approach) or a nice-to-have, to being a competitive
necessity and serious differentiator. Yet while service
providers are busily executing on the principles ofcustomer centricity, the world is shifting again.
The digital economy is characterized by the rapid
introduction of new products and services, with
new competitors and partners appearing suddenly.
For service providers, new challenges include
value fabric-based business and delivery models,
new technologies, highly competitive pricing and
customers who want to communicate via many
channels, easily and uniformly. And all this when they
are just getting a handle on improving more traditional
engagements.
In particular, customers multi-channel expectations
have huge implications for the integration of people,
processes and systems, and for all the partners
who collectively provide a service. Service providers
are struggling with how to gain end-to-end visibility
of services and customers experiences, or even
understanding how to approach ownership, control
and accountability, all while accelerating product
introduction.
The scope of CEM is daunting for many, and
overlaying the value fabric-based digital world on top
of it greatly increases complexity, but the payback for
leading companies that make the commitment and
execute will be worthwhile. We believe that service
providers who can differentiate themselves with a
superior overall customer experience across the digital
services fabric whether they choose the path of
solution provider or enabler will be winners in the
brave new digital world.
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Read this report to get the answers you need to succeed with customer experience in the digital world:
Whatinitiatives do service providers have underway to prepare them for the digital world?
How have service providers approachesevolved around their objectives, digital services,
perceptions of customers priorities and customer journeys?
What are the business process and technology challenges,and critical success factorsfor
CEM programs?
Why exactly is analyzing customer journeysso important, and why now?
Why are analyticsessential, especially real-time network and service analytics, and what are
their challenges?
So what? What does it mean for you, what actionsshould you take now and which toolswill
help you get there?
We hope you enjoy the report and, most importantly, will find ways
to use the ideas, concepts and recommendations detailed within to
improve your customers experiences, and ultimately enjoy greater
profitability and business success as a result. You can contact me
directly with your comments via [email protected].
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SECTION 1
Welcome to TM Forums sixth annual Insights Research
report on customer experience, but the first primarilyfocused on the emerging digital world. Since 2010,
customer experience management (CEM) has climbed
dramatically up service providers agendas, shifting
from being regarded as a cost of doing business or a
nice-to-have, to being a competitive necessity andserious differentiator. Yet while service providers
are busily executing on the principles of customer
centricity, the world is shifting again.
Increased agility
Rapid the introduction of new products, services
Speedy onboarding of new partners
New competitors popping up fast
New business and delivery models
New technologies
Highly competitive pricing
Omnichannel customers
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And all this when they are just getting a handle on
improving more traditional engagements.
For example, Figure 1-1 represents a high level
value map for a digital health scenario, including a
patient, insurance company, national health provider,
medical device supplier and analytics supplier. Serviceproviders could play a key role in several places here.
While a full explanation of this ecosystem is beyond
the scope of this report, even at a high level, the
complexity is clear.
This has upped the ante in an already challenging
environment for service providers. Customers expect
an easy-to-use, consistent, seamless, transparent
and secure experience, regardless of what they are
consuming and whats happening in the background.
This has huge implications for the integration of
people, processes and systems, not only for the
serving provider, but also for the partners who are
stitching together components of the solution, which
previously operated largely on an independent basis.
Service providers are struggling with how to gain
end-to-end visibility of services and resultant customer
experiences, or even understanding how to approachownership, control and accountability, all the while
accelerating product introduction.
Source: TM Forum 2014
1http://bit.ly/CEXmaturitymod
No improvement is possible unless you
know where you currently stand. Assess
your company now.1
ECOSYSTEM
Communications
Service Provider
Insurance
Company
National
Health Service
Analytics
Supplier
Patient
Medical Device
Supplier
http://bit.ly/CEXmaturitymodelhttp://bit.ly/CEXmaturitymodelhttp://bit.ly/CEXmaturitymodelhttp://bit.ly/CEXmaturitymodel -
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Service providers are confronted by much uncertainty
here, but we see pockets of innovation, with a number
of them moving forward on various initiatives. These
are the keys to success:
1. Experimentwith new digital technologies
and methodologies to bring services to
market more quickly and in a more agile
way.
2.Accept the customer trendtoward more
digital and mobile channels. Make disparate
interaction channels into a more cohesive,
seamless experience some companies
have launched omnichannel initiatives, but
its still early days.
3.Recognize the importance of understanding
customer journeys,and dont just analyze
results from touchpoints.
4.Leverage new analytics capabilitiesto
deliver a better experience.
5.Adopt more of anoutside-in view of
customer experience, though this remains a
struggle for many.
6.Engage cross-functional teams to simplify
processes,especially from a customers
point of view.
7.Re-skill employeesto increase their
effectiveness with new initiatives, processes
and technologies.
While most of these initiatives are at an early stage
and face steep challenges, the much greater level of
top management support now shows how big the
opportunity is. These opportunities can only come
to fruition if they demonstrate consistent digital
leadership and customer-centric business practices.
For players who get it right in customer and service
visibility; data management and integration; critical
skills availability and acquisition; and overcoming
organizational inertia, the rewards will be huge but
as shown below, so are the risks of getting it wrong.
A survey published in April 2014 found a solid correlation between a strong CEM program and increased profits. It was carried out by
research firm Dynamic Markets, on behalf of Avaya, with researchers interviewing 1,268 businesses with more than 1,500 employees
across 13 countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, India, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Russia, Singapore, the UK and
the US. Some 54 percent were at senior-management level or above.2
80% 46% 35%
of those who have seen
a significant increase
in profits have a CEM
program in place
without a CEM
program have seen
profits remain static
without a CEM
program suffered a
decrease in profits
2http://www.avaya.com/usa/about-avaya/newsroom/news-releases/2014/pr-140429/
81%
have had CEM
initiatives fail in the
last three years
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SECTION 2
WHO?
Mix of business and IT
executives such as vice president, director and C-level
HOW?
WHERE? TYPE OF SERVICE PROVIDER
Source: TM Forum 2015
Fixed
Mobile
Converged
13%
22%
43%
9%
13%
Cable
Data center/
cloud services
ASIA WESTERN EUROPE
NORTH AMERICA LATIN AMERICA
MIDDLE EASTEASTERNEUROPE/RUSSIA
AFRICA GLOBAL
In August 2015, we conducted research among a wide range of service providers from around the globe.
93% sell to consumers
83% operate a communicationsnetwork
75% sell directly to businesscustomers
56% sell wholesale communicationsand/or computing services
48% of standalone data centeroperators resell capacity
28% resell network capacity fromother carriers (mostly MVNOs
and data center operators)
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We asked our respondents which digital services they
offer beyond communications. Most offer some digital
services: Some are running large production operations,
while others are just getting their feet wet. As shown in
Figure 2-3, cloud services (54 percent) were the most
popular, but close behind were digital media services
(42 percent), machine-to-machine (39 percent typically
through partnerships), and digital marketing and
advertising services (37 percent).
The next tier included security (both home and
business monitoring as well as some information
security services), some over-the-top services (both
in partnership and home grown) and payment and/
or banking services. A small number are involved
in gaming, e-marketplaces and home automation
services.
Almost all, 94 percent, believe digital services will
be important in two- and five-year timeframes, as
illustrated in figure 2-4.
We asked respondents for the top drivers of their
customer experience programs. This years responses
continued the trends from our past three surveys,
with cost reduction, the leading driver from 2008-10
relegated in favor of better customer satisfaction,
increasing revenues, decreasing churn, strengthening
brand, and differentiation from competitors.
Increasing Net Promoter Score (NPS) finished
seventh overall and improving customer effort score
eighth. This may seem like a misrepresentation, as
Cloud services (XaaS)
Digital media (music, video, images, etc.)
Machine-to-machine solutions
Digital marketing / advertising
Over-the-top
Security (electronic / information)
Security (home and business)
Payment / banking
Electronic marketplaces / clearing houses
Gaming / game distribution
Home automation
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60
Source: TM Forum, August 2015
Very important
Important
Neutral
Somewhat unimportant
Not important
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100
Source: TM Forum, August 2015
in 5 years in 2 years
54%
42%
39%
37%
23%
20%
19%
12%
12%
9%
21%
90%
85%
4%
9%
2%
2%
2%
2%
2%
2%
+5
-5%
0%
0%
0%
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more than 60 percent of respondents found them
either very important or somewhat important. This
placement really reflects the broad support for the
higher ranked aspects, with more than 90 percent
rating customer satisfaction scores highly and more
than 80 percent doing the same for increasing revenue
and decreasing churn.
Interestingly, NPS and customer effort score goals
were slightly ahead of cost reduction last year. This
may reflect a less optimistic view of economic trends
among some service providers.
Next we asked service providers what they believe
their customers most want from them, relative to
digital services. The responses reflect a change in
view that seems to be slowly sweeping through
service providers, indicating that while service quality
for communications (especially data services) remains
key, other factors are gaining in importance.
We asked respondents to rate the most important
aspects of customer experience from a customerspoint of view, now and two years from now, using
a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being very important and 1
being not important at all. The aggregate results are
shown in Figure 2-6 on page 12, sorted by the results
for 2017.
Importantly, while this is a survey of service
providers, not customers themselves, the relative
rankings of factors are fairly consistent with direct-
user surveys we have reviewed. Naturally individual
factors vary in importance, based on segmentation
schemes.
Source: TM Forum, August 2015
Increase customer satisfaction
Increase revenues
Decrease churn
Improve/strengthen/expand brand image
Differentiate from competitors
Reduce operating costs
Increase Net Promoter Score
Improve customer effort score
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
Least Important 2 3 4 Most Important
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Source: TM Forum, August 2015
1 = not important, 5 = very important
Topping the list is service quality for applications and
digital services, followed by mobility and the ability
to create personalized solutions. Coming in fourth for
2017 is service quality for data communications.
This is the first time we have seen service quality
for users applications coming in first in several years,
and in fact if we were to rank these aspects on
2015 responses, it would be in a virtual tie for first.
The indication here is that while the communication
Service quality, digital applications/services
Mobility
Ability to create personalized solutions
Service quality, data communications
Billing accuracy/transparency
Multichannel purchasing /support capability
Ease of service acquisition/purchasing
Competitive pricing
Self-service capability/quality
Billing predictability
Broad variety of services
Capacity on demand
Service quality, voice communications
Security
Contact center capability/quality
Service provider brand
Availability of managed network services
Custom service level agreements
Account team/retail effectiveness
0 1 2 3 4 5
4.56
4.20+0.36
4.44
4.14+0.30
4.44
3.72 +0.72
4.41
4.17+0.24
4.354.26
+0.09
4.30
3.83 +0.47
4.27
3.91+0.36
4.26
4.19+0.07
4.23
3.60 +0.63
4.15
3.79+0.36
4.15
3.63 +0.52
4.13
3.80+0.33
4.12
4.11+0.01
4.12
3.68 +0.44
4.03
3.83+0.20
3.88
3.85+0.03
3.85
3.70+0.15
3.85
3.62+0.23
3.69
3.67+0.02
2017 2015
element is a critical enabler of the digital service, the
performance of the digital service is the differentiator
for the customer. This is an important distinction for
service providers, as well as a healthy view of what
counts in the future.
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Our 59 big data use cases3and 8 CEM use cases4both
include specific scenarios around personalization.
3http://bit.ly/DataAnalyticsUseCase4http://bit.ly/CEXUseCases
5http://bit.ly/RevAssSolutions6http://bit.ly/OmnichannelIntroGuide
The TM Forum Revenue Assurance
Solutions Suite5has all the tools you need
to tackle the challenges associated with
delivering a service and getting paid.
Mobility is clearly an important trend, borne outover the last decade. Interviewees expressed the
importance of personalization as an antidote to
the complexity brought on by the proliferation of
applications, devices and services on offer in the
next few years.
Note that voice service quality did not make the top
ten priorities, though it remains important.
Competitive pricing did make the top ten priorities,
as expected, but did not score as highly as one might
think time will tell if this perspective pans out,
as previous surveys have consistently put pricing
near the top. Indeed multiple previous surveys have
indicated that pricing will get even tougher for basic
services in highly penetrated geographies. The hope
is, according to interviewees, that differentiated
products and personalization will provide some relief
from relying heavily on price to compete.
Billing accuracy and transparency once again scored
highly: Predictable bills stayed in the top ten (though
only just), which again is not surprising given the
desire by businesses and consumers alike to control
their spending, especially in turbulent economic times.
Multichannel purchasing and support remained strong
and increases significantly by 2017, reflecting the
move toward omnichannel. A bias toward online and
mobile channels continues to grow, with self-service
capabilities and quality remaining in the top ten
despite tough competition.
Many interviewees indicated continuous
improvement programs in self-service, and some
also discussed Mobile First initiatives, addressing
websites, apps and myriad other aspects.
Ease of purchasing also stayed strong and
strengthens going into 2017. Regular readers know
that this is an extremely important priority for business
customers, especially those who buy a broad variety
of services or are part of a distributed company. These
companies often buy some products and services
Defines the operational functions needed
for omnichannel customer experience and
provides an omnichannel maturity model
assessment.
http://bit.ly/DataAnalyticsUseCaseshttp://bit.ly/CEXUseCaseshttp://bit.ly/RevAssSolutionshttp://bit.ly/RevAssSolutionshttp://bit.ly/OmnichannelIntroGuidehttp://bit.ly/RevAssSolutionshttp://bit.ly/RevAssSolutionshttp://bit.ly/CEXUseCaseshttp://bit.ly/DataAnalyticsUseCases -
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centrally, and others in a relatively decentralized
fashion (such as at a departmental, location or
individual level).
Either way, they want effective, efficient and
consistent ways of doing this, which also reflect their
overall account status (as in discounts and custom
terms and conditions) in these transactions. Many
believe this will become more popular with consumers
as well, as apps and services proliferate. This has
certainly proven true with app stores.
There are a number of other aspects described here,
including capacity on demand and information security
services, which finished just outside the top ten.
Capacity on demand is seen as more important going
forward, especially among service providers who felt
Multichannel
purchasing and
support
Online
and mobile
channels
Continuous
improvement
programs in
self-service
Mobile First
initiatives
Simplification of
purchasing and
support
Effective,
efficient and
consistent
interaction
2017
they would see rapid growth and adoption of both
cloud services and software-defined network services
over the next two years.
While these services likely will not reach full
maturity in that time, they will certainly be rising
rapidly, and will be an important forward-looking
future proofing aspect of business offers, enabling
network and computing infrastructure to deliver these
services.
These are key capabilities for service providers:
Allowing them to provide, package, price and manage
these services is critical to growth and customer
retention.
Security will continue to be important, whether its
embedded as part of services or takes the form of a
monitoring service. The biggest surprise with security
is that it finished just outside the top ten, which is a
cause for concern.
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SECTION 3
As we did last year, we broke challenges into two
categories for service providers: business processchallenges and systems and technical issues.
The breadth of the challenges demonstrates the
complexity respondents face in delivering a superior
customer experience. We asked respondents to rate
challenges from 1 to 5, with 5 being most challenging.
In addition, we asked them to forecast their biggest
challenges two years from now, as more digital
services roll out. As shown in Figures 3-1 and 3-2 on
pages 16 and 18, respectively, service providers face
myriad difficult difficulties now and in future. They are
ranked by their 2017 scores.
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TM Forums Customer Experience Lifecycle
Model7helps service providers partner,
design, integrate, operate and monetize by
linking business and technical collaboration
activities to ensure re-use of concepts,
specifications and service componentsacross the value fabric.
This allows for quick setup of partnering
arrangements; efficient on-boarding of new
partners through a consistent, repeatable
process; ready swapping out of products;
best practices for identification of partner
touchpoints; and a path for evolving
partnerships.
Partnership
Agreements &
Requirements
Partnering
Monetization
Operate Integration
Design
Business
Collaboration
Technical
Collaboration
Reusable
Component
Solution
Source: TM Forum, August 2015
1 = least challenging, 5 = most challenging
0 1 2 3 4 5
2017 2015
Getting a holistic view of the customer
Understanding customers needs
Providing responsive support
Understanding account profitability
Meeting SLA conditions
Providing customized solutions products
Bringing new products to market
Process complexity
Management support
Account management
Partnering with others in the value fabric
Agreement of core metrics
4.56
3.94 +0.62
4.35
4.15+0.20
4.32
4.00+0.32
4.24
3.83 +0.41
4.18
3.83 +0.35
4.15
3.83+0.32
4.09
4.03+0.06
3.88
3.63+0.25
3.85
3.83+0.02
3.79
3.47+0.32
3.71
3.58+0.13
3.70
3.59+0.11
7http://bit.ly/TMForumLifecycleModel
http://bit.ly/TMForumLifecycleModelhttp://bit.ly/TMForumLifecycleModelhttp://bit.ly/TMForumLifecycleModelhttp://bit.ly/TMForumLifecycleModel -
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First and foremost was gaining a holistic customer
view, which is necessary to provide proper account
management and support. Difficulties included
fragmented legacy systems and data, issues with
inter-departmental collaboration, partnering problems,
and general process complexity. This is seen as
especially difficult in the future, as more of the view
spans the value fabric.
Understanding account profitability is another big
issue, especially across an ecosystem where the
end customer may not be easily identified. This can
be particularly difficult for business customers, who
may have multiple accounts in many locations and
subsidiaries operating under different names.
Mergers and acquisitions also contribute to this
problem, and the distribution of the workforce can
mask this too. As if capturing all the revenue from
these accounts is not enough of a problem, allocating
costs correctly can be tough as well.
Meeting service level agreements (SLAs) can be a
complex problem, as service providers assume various
roles in the value fabric and may have little visibility
of the end product. In addition, perceived challenges
in managing virtual environments contributed to
concerns among our interviewees.
Concerns about providing customization solutions
feeds off a number of other challenges, including
issues with understanding customers needs, rapidly
expanding portfolios, limited end-to-end visibility,
under-developed account teams, and growing pains
with new technology and partnerships, among other
things.
8 CEM and 59 big data use cases representing business
challenges with possible solutions mapped to TM Forum
tools and best practices you can use now.8
8http://bit.ly/CEXUseCases
2017 2015
Given the breadth of services and the dynamic
forces shaping the market, service providers believe
it will be increasingly difficult to predict customers
needs, underlining the importance of business agility.
Providing responsive support came in a clear third.
It is a long-standing issue and also will be more
challenging as services fragment across the value
fabric. Shortage of skills, information management
issues, poor sharing of information, inefficient legacy
systems, complex support processes, divergent
departmental goals, staff recruitment and training, andeven contract management problems (among other
things) have plagued the communications industry.
In addition, many have struggled with the rapid shift
of customers to electronic channels and social media
and the expectation of instant gratification.
Leaders are looking to simplify processes and
deploy analytics to better understand and address
these issues, but difficulties remain in coordinating a
rapid and effective response across the value fabric.
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Bringing new products to market remains a real
challenge for many of our respondents. This is nothing
new for the communications industry, which has long
focused on delivering high-quality services, rather than
experimenting openly. Fortunately this is changing.
A number of the companies we interviewed are
experimenting with approaches to radically reduce
product development time. This includes working on
more agile systems implementation and developing
processes to introduce and promote new services
quickly.
Just as for business and process challenges, we
asked research participants about systems and
technical challenges. Yet again, the breadth of the
challenges shows the complexity of the topic. We
Process complexity in general continues to score
high among respondents and is perceived to be an
even bigger problem in 2017 given the need for
speed. A few of interviewees told us theyve realized
some success in their programs by simplifying
everything, especially processes exposed directly
to customers, but much remains to be done. This
highlights the need for high levels of automation to
drive profits in the digital world.
asked respondents to rate challenges from
1 to 5, with 5 being most challenging. The results
are shown in Figure 3-2 above.
Source: TM Forum, August 2015
End-to-end control
Data integration/management
Systems complexity
Business justification
Quality of analytical tools
Availability of critical skills
Cross-organization priorities
Ability to partner with other service providers
Quality of COTS software
Legacy system integration
Cultural issues
0 1 2 3 4 5
4.13
4.10
4.03
4.02
3.91
3.89
3.63
3.48
3.88
3.69
3.67
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1. End-to-end control End-to-end control of services has long been
a problem, given the diversity of network
elements, especially endpoint and device
technology, and wireless customer roaming.
When the complexities of operating in a
value fabric are added where there are
many more components and potential
partners, and visibility becomes more
difficult it is a much bigger problem.
Data integration has always scored very
high in our surveys and returns to its
typical position in the top two of systems
challenges. Simply stated, service providers
face many problems driven by legacy and
departmental systems, and this will likely
be exacerbated by similar issues with value
fabric partners. This is a major problem for
service providers and will likely remain so
for some time, given the diverse collection
of systems and network elements that
generate the data.
2. Systems complexity
Last years leading concern, systems
complexity, remains a serious issue. Given
the breadth of customer experience,
influencing systems and the long history,
gaining holistic views of customers and
solving problems rapidly is a real challenge.
So are replacement and upgrading systems.
The situation is made worse by large,
incumbent operators having a legacy of
fragmented systems and data stores, as well
as multiple heterogeneous networks and
diverse processes.
3. Justifying investment Close behind systems complexity is
business justification for investments.
Interviewees say this is difficult due to
the fragmentation of priorities, as many
systems crossed organizational boundaries
and will cross company boundaries in the
future (though this is as much a coordination
as a justification problem). Moreover, the
dynamic nature of the value fabric and the
markets it serves worsens the problem.
Agility costs money, and returns on
investment are not always clear or finite.
4. Quality of analytical tools
The quality of analytical tools came next,
not surprisingly, since there has been an
influx of tools over the last few years, given
the recognition of their value to managing
customer experience for big and small data.
The good news is that more suppliers are
offering analytical applications to help with
fundamental issues such as service and
network visibility. This is a big challenge for
vendors and service providers as markets
expand, but at least it has become an
important focal point for both.
5. Availability of critical skills
Availability of critical skills came in
fifth, a little lower than expected, with
concerns about complexity, agility and
analytics capabilities, as well as the need
to understand customers preferences
and profitability. Dealing with cross-
organizational priorities is a perennial issue.Most interviewees said they struggle for
consensus on priorities across organizations
and not just in organizations where
management seems less concerned or
active relative to customer experience.
This is one reason that a holistic view of
the customer and an outside-in orientation
is so important: It can help direct priorities
across organizations. Interviewees recognize
this, but struggle with or sometimes feel
powerless to lead change in this area.
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Strong program governance and business alignment
remained high on the list at fifth. Program
management must facilitate the planning and
achievement of program goals; raise program visibility
cross functionally; proactively facilitate conflict
resolution; and keep key initiatives on track. It is
essential given the complexity of balancing cross-
functional issues and implementation.
Adoption of best practices and standards were seen
as the next most important factor. Things like clear
data models and associated entity and attribute
definitions were cited as key, especially with the focus
on data management.
Similarly, the availability of well-defined process
models and interfaces were seen as critical to
speeding process definition, simplification, agility,
conflict resolution, and improving communications
with vendors and partners alike, especially across
value fabrics. Several respondents commented that
the importance of this will likely rise over time, as
other aspects are addressed.
Data management garnered strong support, though
it was down from the previous year in terms of
placement. Again, this is no surprise to regular
readers, as it has been a key finding in many of
our reports for some time. It assumes even more
importance with the advent of initiatives like
omnichannel.Accuracy of data, relevance and timeliness were
identified as being fundamental to success, and there
was special interest in the network. As in previous
years, collection and synchronization of data from
multiple diverse sources remain an issue, especially
for convergent operators, but also for some of the
wireless mobile players.
Business process agility came in second, up from
fourth last year, and nearly made it to the top ranking.
Service providers realize that moving to digital will be a
bumpy ride, and the ability to change dynamically with
the market will be critical. Agility can help address
market volatility and emerging requirements from
partners and customers, while maintaining necessary
levels of efficiency to sustain profitability.
Service providers realize simplicity is a critical enabler
of agility. As markets, services, technologies and
requirements change, processes must quickly and
easily adapt. Hence a clean and simple relationship
between the service provider and its customers and
partners will be essential for obtaining the speed
and ease of use customers demand. Simplification is
easier said than done, but almost all respondents feel
it is necessary.
Critical skills remain a strong factor, in fourth place
for the last two years. Some of this is due in general
to the breadth and complexity of the market, as well
as processes, systems and technologies required
by customer experience programs. However, it also
applies to issues like holistic views of customers,
understanding their needs, and leveraging analytical
insights. Respondents also comment on business
process design, social media, program management
and change management skills, and various other
skills, as well as how to leverage virtualization.
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SECTION 4
For the last few years, analysis of touchpoints has
been a focus for service providers intent on improving
their customers experiences. Many have worked hard
to improve various aspects of their retail stores, onlineinterfaces, contact centers, and more recently mobile
experiences. Some have also tried to address social
media to some degree. While this has helped them to
remain competitive, more companies now understand
the importance of customer journeys, as shown in
Figure 4-1 on page 24.
Much of this shift is driven by customers changing
behavior. In the burgeoning digital world, customers
have unprecedented choice, not only in new products
and services, but also in how they research, acquire,
use, seek support for and express their opinions on
those products. Consumers methods of interaction
and resultant experiences are increasingly important,
especially when dealing with digital goods and
services, but to a greater extent with physical goods.
Customers are adapting quickly to a broad variety
of digital interaction channels, especially in retail,
and demanding that their merchants offer these
capabilities if they want to keep them. They are also
demanding consistency across channels and using
different channels in different places to do different
things at different times of the day.
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Done right, this approach can simplify and improve
customers lives. Done badly, it leads to frustration
and dissatisfaction. Hopping between channels
needs to be seamless, allowing customers to switch
without restarting their journey, and instead taking
the appropriate contextual and historical information
from one channel to the next. As the consumers
perception of the service providers brand is
influenced by all their interactions, journeys must be
consistently supported for every step of all services
and products.
Define customer interactions and model
based on unique journeys.
Seven reasons to create and analyze customer
journeys:
Companies need to think the way their
customers do; looking at things from the
outside-in to achieve customer centricity and
customer journeys facilitate this.
Analyzing the journeys uncovers
inconsistencies in channels, touchpoints,
pricing, descriptive information, terms and
conditions, and other things that would not
necessarily become clear from touchpoint
analysis alone.
Journeys help build the full picture of how
context is maintained (or not) as consumers
hop from channel to channel customers
hate having to re-enter data or repeat
explanations when they switch.
Analyzing the journey trends of more
sophisticated customers can help service
providers find better paths to help them
accomplish their goals. These lessons could
be applied to other consumers, lowering
costs while achieving better operational
efficiency.
Following on from the point above, analysis
of journeys and acting on what is learned
can reduce the effort required of customers,
increasing their satisfaction and lowering the
number of abandoned journeys.
14http://bit.ly/CEXLifecyc
10%
Source: TM Forum, August 2015
2%
88%
Not important at all
Unimportant
Neutral
Important
Very important
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Journeys often involve touchpoints
operated by disparate departments.
Analyzing journeys from the outside-in can
foster a dialog between departments to
improve overall effectiveness, overcoming
departmental sub-optimization.
Creating and analyzing a robust set of
customer journeys is a huge help in
providing test cases for an omnichannel
solution.
BUYING USING SHARING
BE AWARE INTERACT CHOOSE CONSUME MANAGE PAY RENEW RECOMMEND LEAVE
O
BSERVE
L
EARN
R
EACT
R
EQUESTDETAIL
R
ESERVE
S
ELECTPRODUCT/SERVICE
P
LACEORDER
R
ECEIVE
U
SE
R
EVIEWU
SAGE
E
VALUATEVALUE
M
ANAGEPROFILE/SERVICE
R
ECEIVEHELP
R
ECEIVERESOLUTION
R
ECEIVENOTIFICATION
V
ERIFYORDISPUTE
T
OPUP/PAY
E
NHANCESELECTION
R
ENEWC
ONTRACT
R
EFERPRODUCT/SERVICE
G
AINLOYALTY
F
EEDBACK
D
ISCONTINUE
CHANNELS
WEB, DEVICE, EMAIL
CALL CENTER / CARE CENTER
STORE
USSD / SMS / MESSAGING
SOCIAL
FIELD SERVICE / FIELD SALES
MASS MEDIA, DIGITAL SIGNAGE
Source: TM Forum 2015
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First its important to always maintain an outside-
in approach, and continually reinforce the value of
this perspective. It is easy to fall into the trap of
preconceived and biased internal systems, processes
and touchpoints or to decide too early what the
customer should do. Service providers need to
consider what customers actually do and why they do
it. It is also important where possible to use language
natural to the customer. This will create context for
both the changes made and for communication about
those changes once they are made.
Now for the process. We spoke with a number of
sources about this. While approaches were different in
each case, and most were in the relatively early stages
of thinking, overall a four step process emerged:
1. Focus with so many possible journeys to
analyze, where do you start?
2. Observe how are customers really
behaving and why? Also where possible,
explore perception, emotion and attitude.
3. Analyze what should service providers do
to improve the experience? What will be the
impact? Whats the cost?
4. Act and measure take steps to improve
the experience and measure results. Where
appropriate, communicate changes to
customers.
Heres a look at each step in more detail.
Where to focus efforts? Most service providers
suggest creating a list of journeys that reflect
customer needs, such as acquiring a product,
activating a service, using a product or service,
gaining support, and so on. Then the effort turns to
prioritization of journeys. Some speak of targeting high
value customers, while others suggest looking at the
journeys that have the highest potential for advancing
Net Promoter Score (NPS). Some service providers
mention journeys that would probably be most
commonly executed; others look at journeys where
execution was the most problematic. One company
mentioned trying to select journeys that would be
most profitable.
There is clearly overlap among these, but the most
important lesson is to begin with a goal or target to
avoid trying to boil the ocean, and get faster return on
investment.
The biggest problem for practitioners is the
predictability of their efforts. One service provider
spoke of a lengthy project they implemented to
improve the ordering process, expecting it to improve
the NPS, but after implementation and apparently a
smoothly running process, there was no measurable
gain in NPS. We believe that there is no silver bullet;
service providers should begin with a goal and
strategy, measure results, and learn from their own
and others experiences.
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Its particularly important to follow journeys across
multiple touchpoints, especially in siloed or stovepipe
organizations, as there is a tendency for each silo to
focus on its specific touchpoints or channels, sub-optimizing components of the end-to-end customer
experience and measuring only those aspects. This
is classic outside-in thinking. Customers evaluate all
their interactions cross-company in assessing their
experiences with a brand.
Moreover, evaluating the journey can identify gaps
between touchpoints and channels that frustrate
customers, disrupt their journeys, and result in
them abandoning the journey or moving to a more
expensive channel.
Like any other analytical tool, journey maps need to
identify and solve problems; just as observation should
capture customers perceptions of their experiences
relative to their goals, needs and expectations,
analysis should uncover the root problems inherent to
the journeys and result in actionable insights.
For example, we spoke of uncovering gaps
between touchpoints and/or channels above. With
clear identification of positive and negative customer
perceptions, fit into the context of expectations, goals
and behaviors, analysis should allow service providers
to evaluate the impact of these gaps, understanding
the value to the business of an improved experience
and also to assess the cost of improving the journey.
This knowledge could result in clear priorities for
customer experience executives, and help galvanize
efforts across the aforementioned silos.
Just as journey analysis needs to cross touchpoints
and channels, it needs to cross the organizations
both responsible for and impacted by them. But this
approach can only work if those organizations buy in
to the concepts of an outside-in view and the holistic
customer view of the brand. Without this, it will
be difficult to affect change, short of organizational
realignment.
Now comes the time to put the actionable insight to
work here the service provider must address the
issues identified and evaluated in the observation
and analysis phases. Again this will likely require
a coordinated cross-functional effort, so a clear,
achievable, accepted plan is an important first step;
the old maxim measure twice, cut once applies.
Among the most important areas to address in
the plan is a clear, measurable set of indicators and
In this phase, service providers must answer
fundamental questions, such as:
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benchmarks that describe success and a strategyfor obtaining them. Some metrics might include
NPS or other customer loyalty measures, customer
satisfaction measures, customer emotions (preferably
at specific journey stages or touchpoints), and
customer effort measures.
Of course this is just the beginning, and there will
be process- or touchpoint-specific measurements that
evaluate relevance, importance and usefulness of
features, functionality and information.
When implementing these four steps, remember:
1.Understanding your customers ultimate goal
is important and a primary focus for your
innovation. Keep in mind that customers
goals may expand beyond your company,
for example using your services with other
outside services; understanding this could be
valuable. For example, if you could somehow
transform your services to be the best in
the market(s) you operate in for accessing
Facebook, YouTube, QQ, Baidu, Yandex or
Flipkart, what would be the impact? How
can providing infrastructure services that
best support popular applications help you?
Think broadly in choosing journeys.
2.Customer-centric measures are of primary
importance, but actions lowering costs,
increasing revenues, and increasing
employee satisfaction are also key. All these
things can help sell an improvement, and
should be considered.
3.Explore ways to drive metrics into rewardand recognition systems, both for executives
and staff. Remember the adage what
counts is what gets counted and these
programs can be powerful incentives for
change.
4.Make sure your priorities align across whole
journeys. A wow moment at the beginning
can be quickly destroyed by a failure down
the line, creating greater frustration than had
you not set such high expectations at the
start.
5. Communicate wisely! Just as your
neighbors are unlikely to want to watch
all your home videos, your customers
are not interested in every tweak youve
made, and what seems landmark to you
may be mundane to your customers.
Think outside-in and pick your places
and personas. Finally there may be real
opportunities to unobtrusively communicate
changes that make life much easier for
customers, or perhaps promote changes
when you introduce new product or services
customers are interested.
We have 577 number Customer Experience
Management Lifecycle Metrics for a
standardized approach to measuring
customer experience.
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SECTION 5
A look at the business challenges outlined in Section
3 show the potential for analytics, as every challenge
can benefit from the careful application of analytics.
Moreover analytics, and especially so-called real-time
analytics have benefited greatly from advances intechnology over recent years. Accelerating advances
in processing power, lower storage costs, solid state
storage, and in-memory analytical and data-visualization
capabilities have improved service providers ability to
address complex, real-world issues.
This is particularly true with network- and service-
oriented data capture and analysis. Service quality for
applications and communications are at or near the
top of the rankings of customer priorities in Section
3. These technical capabilities help companies deal
much more quickly and effectively with issues like
service and network outages, performance dips,
identifying constrained capacity, network threats, theperformance of customers device and over-the-top
applications and impact, and many other events that
affect service quality.
In addition, service providers are enriching this data
with that from other sources to produce insights that
are important to processes and strategies, which can
improve customers satisfaction with support and
revenue generation.
For example, analytics can help to predict network
and service performance, analyze customer behavior,
and formulate attractive offers for customers based
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on location, history or other factors. This can improveagility in an ever more dynamic market, increase
customers confidence and potentially boost the top
and bottom lines.
Interviews with service providers for our big data
report16earlier this year and this research demonstrate
real enthusiasm for analytics. All are at least
researching the use of real-time analytics; many are
conducting proofs of concept or pilot tests; and a
few have already implemented some early real-time
capabilities.
Service providers are also interested in analytics formuch more than just network and service visibility,
going beyond these traditional areas. Now they
are using the data for real-time customer support,
managing personalized offers, addressing retention
and churn, plus managing fraud, security and
marketing campaigns. Its clear that while companies
value network visibility highly, they see a number of
other purposes as well for using network data.
This is consistent with the results of our survey
on big data analytics, conducted earlier this year.
Several of the top applications identified then as areas
of greatest investment were targets for exploiting
network data. Figure 5-1 shows the results of that
survey, published in May this year.
0 10 20 30 40
Network management
Customer support/care
Personalized offer management
Marketing execution
Revenue assurance
Churn/retention management
Service management
Fraud management
Security
Business process optimization
Network planning and design
Channel/partnership management
Device management
Field/workforce management
Data monetization/sharing
New product introduction
Social media analysis
Web/mobile analytics
New product development
Source: TM Forum 2015
This year Next 2 years
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The enthusiasm for analytics potential was balanced
by concern about a number of challenges. Quality
and reliability of data were most often mentioned.
This spanned being able to capture, correlate and
ingest data from multiple network sources, but
also correlating and synchronizing it with relatively
static reference and historical data. This prompted
discussions about the importance of data governance.
Skills availability, both in systems design and
especially in analysis, was a big concern. Service
providers want analytical applications that reflect
latest knowledge and best practices, and, importantly,
produce insights that can be acted upon. While no
one expected applications that can see everything
or offer closed-loop capabilities, interviewees did
expected them to at least offer solid trend analysis,
prediction of likely future developments and some
actionable recommendations.
Big Data Analytics Guidebook design your operations for success
Analytics Big Data Repository for the efficient and straight forward
re-use of data for multiple purposes.
1000+ big data metrics to measure success
59+ big data use cases shares challenges and solutions16http://bit.ly/BigDataLiftsO
17http://bit.ly/BigDataAnalyticsSolution
Almost all respondents also cited the 3 Vs volume
velocity and variety of data available as well as
some approaches that might help. Most realize
the importance of carefully selecting and scoping
the problems to prioritize rather than trying to do
everything at once. We got similar comments on
scoping velocity that is, speed costs money, and
service providers need to choose the right time,
which is balancing cost and time intervals to gain
optimal business value.
There are many more areas we could discuss in
analytics which, as mentioned, apply to most areas
of digital services. They will assume an even stronger
position as virtualization and the Internet of Things
take hold. Readers might also be interested in our
section on predictive analytics in our big data Insights
report to get a better feel for the power of these
capabilities. However you look at it, analytics are
essential to success in the digital world.
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SECTION 6
Service providers understand the concepts and
principles of customer experience. This is clear from
the findings outlined in this report, drawn from our
survey and in-depth interviews with them, as wellas discussions with suppliers and other information
from white papers, strategy documents and product
descriptions.
Understanding is one thing, execution another. Plus
the dynamic and diverse nature of the digital world
will challenge you further how much will depend on
your digital strategies and the scale of shift in their
markets. Still a number of lessons stand out, some
long-standing, others relatively new, based on the
characteristics of digital markets and recent findings.
Here are the top actions to take. They are not one-
off tasks but require consistent, concerted effort, and
they are closely inter-linked you wont succeed by
doing things in isolation.
The complexity and urgency of getting customer
experience right means that any help with best
practices, data management and domain frameworks
will be save you money, speed up progress and
reduce risk. For example, TM Forum has a number of
useful assets for service providers and vendors alike
see the TM Forum Toolkit on page 37.
They have been developed and tested by your peers
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many of them are already in use by a diverse rangeof companies around the world to address the same
business issues that you are likely facing.
The core of the Forums assets is the Frameworx
suite of standards-based tools and best practices
see page 39 developed and evolved by thousands
of dedicated professionals from around the world
working together within the Forum in small groups
and on Catalyst projects.
There are practical implementation guidebooks, use
cases, maturity models and more around customer
experience and analytics, as shown in the Toolkit
section. Check it out. If youd like to know more about
the Forums Customer Centricity strategic program
and/or get involved, contact Rebecca Sendel, Senior
Director, TM Forum, who leads the program via
Satisfying and even better, delighting customers
is the number one goal of every person within a
company, whether their job is directly customer-facing
or not. That means you have to approach everything
from the customers point of view.
Can you get there in one jump? No. But you can look
at what your customers want and expect, then draw
up a roadmap of how you get from where you are to
where you need to be.
Each point of contact between customers and their
service providers or partners contributes to customers
perception, satisfaction and loyalty. This has a direct
bearing on the profitability of a service provider. Good
experience drives higher levels of engagement, and
the purchase of more value-added services, ratherthan those that are increasingly commoditized as
shown in Figure 6-1.
This is where leadership and vision come in.
Great customer experience every time is a destination
youll never reach, because in the digital world, things
change all the time, so delivering excellent customer
experience is about continuous improvement and
being as agile and smart as your customers. So, as
clearly recognized in this report, and substantiated
by so many others, strong leadership is perhaps the
single most important critical success factor.
Customer experience strategy must reflect the
corporate strategy, which is difficult in a multi-faceted
business like communications. Given the scope,
cross-functional nature and complexity of planning
and executing a customer experience strategy,
top managements sponsorship of and approval is
Source: TM Forum 2015
BUILDING YOUR BUSINESS
AROUND CUSTOMERS
MEANS HAPPY CUSTOMERS
WITH INCREASED
BRAND LOYALTY
WHO SPEND MORE
& ARE MORE TOLERANT
WHO RECOMMEND YOU
TO FRIENDS, FAMILY &
ON SOCIAL MEDIA
& CHURN LESS OFTEN
GIVING HIGHER MARGINS
AND THUS INCREASING
PROFITABILITY
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essential. Improving customer experience is, afterall, a business strategy, and top management should
proactively set both the digital and the customer
experience agendas, preferably together.
Top management must set the vision, determine
affordability (at least at a guideline level), allocate
appropriate resources, ensure cross-functional
coordination, and sometimes remove the key
obstacles that inevitably pop up during the course of
implementation. There is a reason top management
support was cited as the number one critical success
factor in our survey.
The top team has to be united and complement and
support each other to make it happen. Disagreements
at the top will create factions throughout the
organization, and being customer centric is nothing
if not about joined up thinking, planning and
implementation. Having a customer-centric culture is
vital and you wont succeed without it, no matter how
good your technology is.
Moreover, a continuous sampling of customer
experience as behavior and even the structure of the
digital ecosystem changes lends itself nicely. Several
of our respondents are already pursuing this approach.
Again, this is fundamental to success, and no effort
should be spared in gaining that understanding.
This is tough, not least because a lot of the time
your customers dont know until they see it, or until
something doesnt work properly.
Customer journeys, as outlined in Section 4, are
a hugely valuable means of gaining insight and
understanding where processes break down, becausethey ignore departmental boundaries and look at the
overall experience around any given task or issue.
Customers preferences and behavior shift all the
time, at the micro level depending on what they are
trying to do at any particular moment (we discovered
the performance of applications was identified
by respondents to our survey as the single most
important thing to customers) to them embracing
larger trends. The massive rise in streaming video via
mobile is a good example.
While Amazons Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos
Responsible for driving all aspects of customer relationships
throughout the customer lifecycle.
The CEO must own the companys overall vision, working to develop
it, selling it to the board and driving it forward.
The role of the Chief Marketing Officer really depends on the scope
of responsibility and influence of that position versus that of the CCO
A Chief Information Officer is usually involved with re-engineering
business processes, identifying and developing the capabilities
needed to use new tools, and identifying and exploiting the
enterprises knowledge resources.
The Chief Digital Officer is responsible for the companys digital
business models, and the management and delivery of digital
assets.
The more fragmented a companys data, the more difficult it is to
manage and protect, and the more likely it is that sensitive data
could be compromised. This has created a new post in some
companies, the Chief Data Officer.
CCO
CEO
CMO
CIO
CDiO
CDaO
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claims, Were not competitor obsessed; werecustomer obsessed. You need to keep your eye on
whats going on in the market. Even so, a key strand
of Amazons strategy is building an ecosystem of
content tightly tied to its devices (Kindle, Fire) the
core of Apples astounding success.
Yes, specific aspects like service quality and
competitive pricing should be priorities, but service
providers must develop and manage an enterprise-
wide vision of all aspects of customer interaction to
deliver the right experience, at the right time in the
right context.
Importantly, the vision must reflect the view of the
customer, a difficult change given the long-standing
internal focus service providers have had. An overall,
enterprise-wide outside-in view is most certainly how
the customer experiences a provider, as that customer
interacts with individual departments within the
companies organization through multiple channels.
Collecting, collating, analyzing, managing and
securing data to pull out timely, contextualized,
accurate and meaningful information is a big part of
creating a complete picture. This is difficult as data is
generated and stored right across a service providers
organization, in every imaginable format, and at times in
conflict with the similar data from other sources. Data
management programs must, therefore, address quality
issues, and ensure data accessibility and usability.Good management of customers data is
increasingly difficult as the number of sources
increases and extends outside the company, for
instance to partners involved in service delivery and
also social media.
Always remember that customers data is a huge
corporate asset and you are in a position of trust,
hence privacy and security are very important aspects
of data management. Many, well-publicized incidences
of companies failing to safeguard customers data
have demonstrated that failure to live up to that trust
can do massive brand damage, in addition to havingto pay compensation and fines inflicted by regulatory
and legal bodies, and is the extreme opposite of good
customer experience.
Privacy was a top issue in our initial survey on
customer experience two years ago, and remains
there today.
Each customer is unique and looking for a tailored
experience. Suppliers must develop a deep
understanding of the customer across the lifecycle. As
we look across the big picture of the total experience,
there is sometimes a tendency to lump customers
into one big group, or segment broadly.
This is exactly what service providers should not
do; certainly other members of the value fabric are
moving away from this. Each individual has their own
set of circumstances, needs, history and experiences.
Service providers need to recognize this and
develop and empower their customers to tailor their
experiences if they are to improve and deepen the
customer relationship.
Although at first glance, stripping back your portfolio
to its core products looks like the opposite of offering
tailored services, it is essential. It is just not possible
to automate the dynamic bundling of products
and services to customers if you have hundreds
or thousands of them. And automation is the only
affordable and operationally feasible option.Typically adding another product has been the
approach to offering variations on an existing theme
or a bundled offer in the communications business,
often adding different processes and systems. This
is not sustainable, as its too slow and costly to run
and prevents you from getting to market quickly,
and especially it inhibits your ability to offer tailored
packages to customers.
You need processes you can replicate and reuse
to build services rather than start over every time.
So once youve started to really understand what
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customers want, simplify your portfolio, which willenable you to radically simply the processes that
enable them and streamline the systems they run on.
This will give you greater business agility in general,
as shown in the graphic, taken from our free how-to
guide, How to become an agile business.18
And the really big thing to remember is not to slip
back into old ways, doing things in a hurry and creating
additional, customized systems and processes that
sooner or later (and probably sooner), will inhibit your
agility and fracture customers experience not least
because a cumbersome IT structure is a hurdle to
integrating with your partners systems.
The Virgin Media case study19is a great illustration
of all these points.
In a market based on a digital fabric, partners are an
extension of the service provider. For partnerships to
work they must all treat each other, in some respects,
like customers. This is yet another reason that the
customer experience strategy needs to fit the overall
business strategy, driven by top management.
Extending many of the recommendations here to
partner management will serve the service provider
well dont forget youre only as strong as the
weakest thread in the value fabric and your customers
dont care whose fault it is when stuff doesnt work.
There are four key elements in successfully managing
partnerships financial, contractual, operational and
technical.20
Also, our new Quick Insightsreport, Digital services:
Developing successful business models and roles21is a brief but comprehensive guide to the options and
roles available to various partners within the value
fabric. Download it now, free, by registering on our
website.
As noted in our research, and shown in the graphic
above, program management and governance was
strongly supported in the critical success factors.
RADICALLYSIMPLIFY
PROCESSES
SIMPLIFY
PORTFOLIO &
CHANNELS
CLEAR VISION
AND STRONG
LEADERSHIP
SIMPLICITY =
customer experience
and agility up, operating
costs down
RADICALLY
SIMPLIFY
SYSTEMS
UNDERSTANDING
THE CUSTOMER
GOOD
GOVERNANCE
Source: TM Forum 2015
https://www.tmforum.org/resources/research-and-analysis/becoming-an-agile-business/http://inform.tmforum.org/features-and-analysis/featured/2014/12/case-study-gain-agility-configurability-faster-launch-times/https://www.tmforum.org/resources/research-and-analysis/digital-services-developing-successful-business-models-and-roles/#sthash.X0mFsL2X.dpbshttps://www.tmforum.org/resources/research-and-analysis/digital-services-developing-successful-business-models-and-roles/#sthash.X0mFsL2X.dpbshttps://www.tmforum.org/resources/research-and-analysis/digital-services-developing-successful-business-models-and-roles/#sthash.X0mFsL2X.dpbshttps://www.tmforum.org/resources/research-and-analysis/digital-services-developing-successful-business-models-and-roles/#sthash.X0mFsL2X.dpbshttp://inform.tmforum.org/features-and-analysis/featured/2014/12/case-study-gain-agility-configurability-faster-launch-times/https://www.tmforum.org/resources/research-and-analysis/becoming-an-agile-business/ -
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You cant do everything at once. Accept that different
parts of the business will move at different speeds,
driven by priorities, which themselves might change.
Sure, a consistent experience is important, but this
will only be achieved over time, as you balance
investments across domains.
So pick some areas where you can make the
biggest difference fast. In addition to improving things
for customers, it will also demonstrate that your
strategy is right and bearing fruit. It will give your staff,
partners, shareholders and customers confidence in
the strategy and help your business case to secure the
investment you need to make continuous progress.
We hope youve enjoyed the report, and most
importantly, will find ways to use the ideas, concepts
and recommendations detailed within to improve your
customers experiences, and ultimately enjoy greater
profitability and business success as a result.
This is not surprising given the scope, complexity andorganizational conflicts that must be addressed in a
customer experience program designed to meet the
complex needs of business customers.
This could be even more important when dealing
with new business models, as program management
may well extend beyond the traditional enterprise,
and the ability to understand and align with partners
strategy will take on new meaning.
Technology isnt the trickiest thing about customer
experience; the company culture is. In every business,
the quality and attitude of the people makes a huge
difference, especially but not only those people who
are facing the customer.
Smart companies know that proper sourcing,
development, and reward and recognition programs
are key to acquiring, improving and retaining the talent
pool that is responsible for their most important asset
their customers.
18http://bit.ly/1KDkzpU Becoming an agile business is free to download by registering on our website19Watch the Virgin Media video and see the infographic at http://bit.ly/1PAvhBW20See page 1621http://bit.ly/1G742cE
Ultimately, what is important to remember is that while the overall effort may seem daunting, the payback
for leading companies who have made the commitment and executed has been worthwhile. We believe that
service providers who can differentiate themselves with a superior overall customer experience across the
digital services fabric, whether they choose the path of solution provider or enabler, will be winners in the
brave new digital world.
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Agile Business & IT
TM Forums Agile Business and IT Programhelps enterprises
optimize their IT and business operations. New features include:
n A dynamic policy approach to end-to-end SLA managementfor
hybrid operations, underpinned by the worlds first information
model for the hybrid environment.
nA catalog approach to creating services through internal service
components and external sources, supported by a federated
catalog model, a UML catalog model in the Information Framework,
DevOps and agile product lifecycle management.
nA Procurement Survival Kitbased on procurement patterns,
ecosystem partner management, NFV procurement packaging,
federated catalogs and maturity models.
Open Digital Ecosystem
TM Forums Open Digital Ecosystem Programhelps service
providers, enterprises and technology suppliers create and manage
complex, innovative services. New features include:
n End-to-end assets to support for any organization in any digital
business, using partnership best practices (B2B2x), service
platform architecture (DSRA), and APIs. They have been validated
by use cases for smart energy, digital health, smart city, Internet of
Things (IoT) and others.
n The Digital Services Toolkitprovides a structured methodology and
process to map business contexts to Frameworx assets.
Customer Centricity
IoT, smart everything and virutalization will impact customer
centricity and the use of analytics. This program is building a
common language, tools and resources to enable the transition to an
omnichannel, customer-centric digital future:
n The Customer Experience Management (CEM) ROI Calculator
supports better decision-making around investment.
n The Omni-channel Introductory Guidehas a new maturity model
and an more than 70 new requirements to accelerate discussions
internally and with suppliers.
n The 360-degree view of the customerexplores how a repeatable
approach and common language streamline better, personal
interactions.
nEight new business-oriented use cases for data analytics, bringing
the total to 59, for service providers and suppliers to simplify and
speed up data analytics projects.
Security & Privacy
TM Forums Security & Privacy Programrun across all projects in the
strategic programs outlined above. New features include:
n The initial blueprint for a Privacy dashboardidentifies the aspirations
of individuals and organizations.
n Privacy management is integrated into the Frameworx Engaged
Partywork, which to date includes the Information Framework
and Business Process Framework.
TM Forums Security & Privacy Program also focuses on
orchestrating security functions end-to-end across virtualized services
see the Catalyst project Security Functions in NFV.
Core Frameworks
Updates to the core frameworks widen their applicability to digital
ecosystems:
n The Supplier/Partner concept in the Information Frameworkhas
evolved the Engaged Partywork to reflect the range of partnerships,
relationships and models needed for multi-industry digital
ecosystems.
n TheApplication Frameworkis more granular to maximize the re-
use and consistency of common functionality. This also simplifies
procurement of applications.
n Assets from the Security & Privacy and Customer Centricity
programs are embedded into Frameworx 15.
Frameworx Conformance Certification
Frameworx is used by 91 percent of the worlds largest service
providers and 82 percent of respondents to TM Forums 2014
Frameworx adoption surveymandate Frameworx in requests for
proposal.
More than 85 products, solutions and implementations from more
than 30 companies have been certified as conformantto Frameworx.
Read in the Case Study Handbook 2015and Perspectives 2015how
Frameworx helps companies across multiple industries make digital
business a reality.
The latest version of blueprint for digital business success,
TM Forum Frameworx 15, gives Forums diverse global membership
actionable information that can be used immediately.
https://www.tmforum.org/strategic-program/more-agile-virtualized/https://www.tmforum.org/resources/standard/ig1127-end-to-end-virtualization-management-impact-on-e2e-service-assurance-and-sla-management-for-hybrid-networks-r15-0-0/https://www.tmforum.org/resources/technical-report/tr244-tm-forum-information-framework-enhancements-to-support-zoom-r15-0-0/https://www.tmforum.org/resources/standard/ig1129-product-lifecycle-management-comparison-of-traditional-and-virtualized-plm-r15-0-0/https://www.tmforum.org/resources/standard/ig1133-nfv-procurement-survival-kit-r15-0-0/https://www.tmforum.org/strategic-program/more-connected-to-partners/https://www.tmforum.org/open-digital-ecosystem-2/https://www.tmforum.org/open-digital-ecosystem-2/https://www.tmforum.org/strategic-program/apis/https://www.tmforum.org/digital-services-toolkit-2/https://www.tmforum.org/resources/standard/gb962e-customer-experience-management-roi-calculator-user-guide-r15-0-0/https://www.tmforum.org/resources/standard/ig1125-omni-channel-introductory-guide-r15-0-0/https://www.tmforum.org/resources/standard/ig1134-360-degree-view-of-a-customer-r15-0-0/https://www.tmforum.org/resources/standard/gb979a-big-data-analytics-use-cases-r15-0-0/https://www.tmforum.org/strategic-program/security-privacy/https://www.tmforum.org/resources/standard/tr243-privacy-management-r15-0-0/https://www.tmforum.org/resources/standard/gb922-engaged-party-r15-0-0/https://www.tmforum.org/resources/standard/gb922-engaged-party-r15-0-0/https://www.tmforum.org/information-framework-sid/https://www.tmforum.org/business-process-framework/http://inform.tmforum.org/features-and-analysis/featured/2015/05/learning-how-to-orchestrate-security-in-the-virtual-world/https://www.tmforum.org/resources/suite/gb922-information-framework-sid-r15-0-0/https://www.tmforum.org/resources/standard/gb922-engaged-party-r15-0-0/https://www.tmforum.org/resources/suite/gb929-application-framework-r15-0-0/https://www.tmforum.org/resources/suite/gb929-application-framework-r15-0-0/https://www.tmforum.org/tm-forum-frameworx/adoption/https://www.tmforum.org/conformance-certification/https://www.tmforum.org/resources/research-and-analysis/case-study-handbook-2015/https://www.tmforum.org/resources/research-and-analysis/perspectives-2015/https://www.tmforum.org/tm-forum-frameworx/https://www.tmforum.org/tm-forum-frameworx/https://www.tmforum.org/resources/research-and-analysis/perspectives-2015/https://www.tmforum.org/resources/research-and-analysis/case-study-handbook-2015/https://www.tmforum.org/conformance-certification/https://www.tmforum.org/tm-forum-frameworx/adoption/https://www.tmforum.org/resources/suite/gb929-application-framework-r15-0-0/https://www.tmforum.org/resources/standard/gb922-engaged-party-r15-0-0/https://www.tmforum.org/resources/suite/gb922-information-framework-sid-r15-0-0/http://inform.tmforum.org/features-and-analysis/featured/2015/05/learning-how-to-orchestrate-security-in-the-virtual-world/https://www.tmforum.org/business-process-framework/https://www.tmforum.org/information-framework-sid/https://www.tmforum.org/resources/standard/gb922-engaged-party-r15-0-0/https://www.tmforum.org/resources/standard/gb922-engaged-party-r15-0-0/https://www.tmforum.org/resources/standard/tr243-privacy-management-r15-0-0/https://www.tmforum.org/strategic-program/security-privacy/https://www.tmforum.org/resources/standard/gb979a-big-data-analytics-use-cases-r15-0-0/https://www.tmforum.org/resources/standard/ig1134-360-degree-view-of-a-customer-r15-0-0/https://www.tmforum.org/resources/standard/ig1125-omni-channel-introductory-guide-r15-0-0/https://www.tmforum.org/resources/standard/gb962e-customer-experience-management-roi-calculator-user-guide-r15-0-0/https://www.tmforum.org/digital-services-toolkit-2/https://www.tmforum.org/strategic-program/apis/https://www.tmforum.org/open-digital-ecosystem-2/https://www.tmforum.org/open-digital-ecosystem-2/https://www.tmforum.org/strategic-program/more-connected-to-partners/https://www.tmforum.org/resources/standard/ig1133-nfv-procurement-survival-kit-r15-0-0/https://www.tmforum.org/resources/standard/ig1129-product-lifecycle-management-comparison-of-traditional-and-virtualized-plm-r15-0-0/https://www.tmforum.org/resources/technical-report/tr244-tm-forum-information-framework-enhancements-to-support-zoom-r15-0-0/https://www.tmforum.org/resources/standard/ig1127-end-to-end-virtualization-management-impact-on-e2e-service-assurance-and-sla-management-for-hybrid-networks-r15-0-0/https://www.tmforum.org/strategic-program/more-agile-virtualized/ -
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