A Progressive Approach to Personalization

Until service providers learn to truly personalize their services, all their talk about being customer focused should include an asterisk.

It is not as if they aren’t trying. And they are in fact, focusing on the customer. They just have a ways to go before being customer focused develops into a more intimate relationship. Service providers have been busy poring over reams of customer data and are planning to spend large sums of money to help them generate and analyze even more in an effort to know their customers better. In fact, it is one of the few areas of capital spending that service providers haven’t trimmed. According to Infonetcis Research, service providers spent $128 million on subscriber data management solutions in 2008, up 21 percent from 2007. This year, despite cuts elsewhere, it will increase again, almost doubling from Infonetics’ previous forecast.

But knowing a lot of information about a customer is only a first step to achieving a 360-degree view and implementing the processes and interfaces that allow the delivery of personalized services as well as the feedback loop that creates a two-way relationship.

It’s a comprehensive view that requires a comprehensive solution – and that means time and money. However, the journey can be broken into smaller parts that provide their own benefits along the way.

Jeff Cortley, president of Alcatel-Lucent's Subscriber Data Management business, believes service providers can take a progressive approach to personalization. He suggests starting with something as simple as implementing single sign-on (SSO) capabilities that not only simplify the interaction between the customer and his or her provider, but help foster a single view in both directions, meaning, that while service providers are trying valiantly to develop a comprehensive, single view of their customer, they don’t always provide the customer with the same courtesy. Customers who have wireline, wireless, broadband and/or IPTV service from one company should see that company as a single entity.

“A lot of service providers have implemented various forms of single sign-on, but I think there is still room for improvement,” Cortley said. “I am still amazed that when you access a service provider portal, you have to enter your zip code in three different parts of the portal.”