Tara Seals Blog: Savoring That World Cup Draw with England

Billing & OSS World, Washington D.C. — Another year, another B/OSS World Conference & Expo. We came. We saw. We talked billing. And then, as quickly as it began, it was over.

Ruminating on the takeaways from the show this weekend, I was ensconced at the Paradise City Tavern here in Northampton, Mass., watching as we Yanks managed to pull out a draw in our opener against England in the World Cup. It wasn’t a beautiful win, but it was something to keep us going for a little while at least. And judging from the discussions I had at the show, this is also a fair assessment of the state of billing and OSS transformation in telecom today.

There are so many wonderful ideas for what the future should look like, coming from what surely represents one of the greatest brain-trusts in the world: Telecom thought-leaders are hardly the dimmest knives in the drawer, if you know what I mean. So why have we just not gotten there?

As an example, customer-centricity was one of the top themes of the show and surely the most beloved (kind of like Tim Howard, our keeper, the Man of the Match on Saturday). And it’s a very good thing that carriers and vendors alike are moving away from a focus on services only, instead taking into account the rich panoply of personalities and interests that make up their customer bases. Understanding that makes for interesting new opportunities not just through targeted cross-selling but also in terms of loyalty and maintaining a place in the value chain in an era of over the top content.

But like that bouncing soccer ball from Dempsey making its way into the goal thanks to goalkeeper error rather than excellent execution on our part, there’s much room for improvement. For telecom, a recognition of how things need to be is a positive step that will keep the carriers that understand that in the game. But CSPs need faster action to win in the end.

For instance, I recently added HBO to my cable account so I can watch “True Blood” without paying per episode. I decided to do that online because I was pressed for time and, well, using the telephone just seems so much of a hassle. But because of a requirement to IM chat with a live agent about my order before it could take effect, I ended up annoyed and spending far more time than I wanted to. Also the order entry page didn’t know who I was, even though I was logged into my account, meaning that there were several extra steps that just seemed frankly gratuitous. And then by the end, when I had to wait for five minutes for someone to enter the chat room just to tell me that I was all set, I was moving into disgusted territory. The concept of personal engagement here has gone hideously wrong. And in fact, it was the last straw for me. I’m now anxiously awaiting my telco to bring its fiber-based triple-play to town.

We can do better. We need to do better. And judging by all the good conversations at B/OSS World, there are lots of ideas for getting to the next round. Let’s do that.

Be sure and root on Team USA on Friday against Slovenia. We need to win or risk going home. A draw this time will simply not be good enough.