Sun Shines Through for Wireless Care

By Brian Pawlus, Oracle

 In addition to much-needed vacations and long-awaited sunny weather, the end of summer brought good news for the U.S. wireless industry, courtesy of JD Power & Associates. In early August, the consumer ratings firm announced that wireless industry customer satisfaction went up by 12 points in the last six months thanks to shorter wait times and faster problem resolution.

Then, at the end of August, the firm reported that customer call quality has improved over the last six months with fewer instances of dropped calls, static, failed call connections, etc. Although the news was better for some providers than others, it was no doubt welcome sunshine in this gloomy economy. And, it reminds us just how important both types of service – network service and customer service – are to the complete customer experience.

As this is my first foray into blogging and I only have limited space, I’ll reflect on just one of those, customer care, and save the network topics for my other colleagues who you’ll be hearing from in this space in the coming weeks.

The uptick in customer satisfaction is a promising sign that wireless providers — particularly the survey’s leaders, Alltel/Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile — have made smart decisions about their customer care systems and are starting to reap the benefits. This is something we are seeing not only in the U.S., but around the world.

Gone are the days when the “360-degree view of the customer” was a pipe dream. Service providers are making it happen with integrated billing and CRM systems that ensure customer care reps have the most accurate data about all customer interactions at their fingertips. In the current economy, with increasing pressure to cut operational costs, the focus is shifting away from “How do I achieve this integration?” to the more enlightened question, “How do I achieve this integration cost-effectively?” It is estimated that service providers spend 70 percent of their IT budgets on maintaining integrations. That means that service providers need to look at how they integrate systems in a way that they can extend and maintain easily and at a minimum cost, so as not to detract from the benefits achieved by making the integration in the first place. Standards-based applications with out-of-the-box integrations can help achieve and foster faster, more affordable and scalable implementations.

A good example of this comes from KPN, the leading multi-play provider in the Netherlands, which is in the process of consolidating 65 billing systems and 20 CRM systems as part of a multi-year transformation project. Already, KPN has realized an 11 percent increase in customer satisfaction due in part to the tighter integration between CRM and billing, which puts information into the hands of CSRs more quickly, improving first call resolution and, in the case of self-service, allowing customers to view detailed, updated account data at any time.

The bottom line is that if wireless or multi-play providers like KPN continue to take customer care and billing to the next level, we should see more sunny days ahead. What’s your forecast? I welcome your thoughts below.

Brian Pawlus is director, product marketing within the Oracle Communications Global Business Unit. His more than 20 years of experience has provided him with extensive expertise within the mobile sector of the telecommunications industry. He is a frequent conference speaker and regularly consults with telecommunications service providers and industry analysts globally.